This phenomenon is caused by the physiological characteristics of our brain.
Did you also have the feeling that as a child, a year lasted forever? And then, after school, over time, something happened and, biting the bit, it rushed forward at a dizzying speed. University of Virginia psychologist Peter Mangan conducted an interesting experiment that proves that the sense of time does change noticeably with age.
The study involved 3 groups of people: young guys in their early 20s, mature citizens of 30-40 years old and experienced aksakals 60+. The volunteers were asked to mentally count 3 minutes, for a reference point it was possible to count seconds silently. The 20-year-olds felt the time most accurately: for them, three minutes passed on average in 3 minutes and 3 seconds. Middle-aged people were wrong by 8 seconds, while older people were already 40 seconds late. This experience gave Peter Mangan reason to believe that there is a mechanism in our brain that gives us the perception of time intervals.
Moreover, our inner sense of time obeys other laws than physical time, which is determined by the daily cycle of the Earth's rotation around the axis and the annual cycle of the planet's revolution around the Sun.
What units does our mental time operate with in this case? On what does it base its count?
Duke University professor Adrian Bejan believes that the perception of time depends on the ability of the brain to process information coming from external space. In childhood, when a child discovers a huge and unfamiliar world around him, he needs incredible intellectual efforts to figure out all the details. The irrepressible children's curiosity generates thousands of questions, half of which even the smartest of us do not know the answer. In the first 15-16 years of its existence, thanks to the feverish work of the brain, the child makes tremendous progress, turning from a helpless nursing infant into a person. In the future, of course, we continue to improve our intellectual abilities, but we are no longer able to repeat such a qualitative leap.
So, according to Bejan, there is an inversely proportional relationship between the speed of information processing and the feeling of the speed of time. When in childhood we are forced to comprehend something new at every step, then time passes slowly for us. But as we grow up, we lose the ability to be surprised and do a lot “on the machine”, the information processing slows down and there is a feeling that time is running faster. A physiological indicator of a decline in brain performance is the frequency of saccadic eye movements. With their help, the visual apparatus updates the “picture” entering the brain and allows you to examine objects in detail. Studies show that the highest rate of "refreshing" of the picture is observed in infants, in adults, the saccadic rhythm gradually decreases over the years.
As Alla Pugacheva quite rightly noted, life cannot be turned back! But is it possible to slow down, if not physical, then at least mental time? Perhaps it is worth making life more eventful, new impressions and throwing the sofa and TV out of the house. And then the brain will come out of the routine, start to digest unfamiliar signals and give the command: "Slow down, horses!" …
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Five years of schoolchildren are equal to forty years of an adult
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli of the University of Pittsburgh, author of The Order of Time, believes that a sense of time is born from the relationship of two variables: the memory of the past and the life perspective that we drew for ourselves. Accordingly, the sense of time cannot obey the laws of simple arithmetic: that is, a year of a small child's life "weighs" much more than a year of an elderly person. For a 2-year-old child, a year is half of his life. In a year, this baby will celebrate his third birthday. But on the clock of mental time, this year will be equal to 10 years that a 20-year-old will live before celebrating his 30th birthday.
Proponents of this theory believe that for people, equivalent periods of time will be periods from 5 to 10, from 10 to 20, from 20 to 40 and from 40 to 80 years.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV
