Introduction

Time is a mystery and so is its perception. Had there been no clocks, the perception of time would have been differenct for different individuals. This perception is dependent upon many factors like type of task one is performing, level of interest in the task, level of concentration in the task, the routine or non-routine of the task and the goals of the task. For example, the same person perceives the same time duration differently when he is engaged in a boring activity compared to when he is engaged in a stimulating task.

In our project, we will try to study the behaviour of people with regard to perception of time under different routine and non-routine tasks and propose a general hyphothesis regarding the perception of time in such cases. We would also try to give a possible cognitive explanation for such behaviour. This will be based on the work by Dinah Avni-Babad and Ilana Ritov. [1]

Routine and non-routine tasks

Routine tasks are those with which we are acquainted or which have some sense of order in them. Take for example the task of brushing teeth with which we are well familiarised. Another example when a sense of order defines routine is when you are asked to fold a pile of clothes. In general, routine tasks are predictable in nature

Contrary to this non-routine tasks are those to which we are not used to and which have some sort of unpredictability associated with them. For example, the task of sorting random objects lying in a room.

Prospective v/s Retrospective time perception

There are two ways in which we percieve time. The first is perspective time perception in which we know that we have to make a measurement of time after the task and thus, we put some mental effort to take a note of the time duration during the task period.

Retrospective time perception on the other hand, requires estimation of time after the task is complete and when one is not looking to measure the time during the task.

Experiments for Study

Expermiment 1: Retrospective time perception I
In this experiment a video will be shown to the subjects as a memory task. The video will have the following properties:

The beginning will be a labelled silent period of a fixed length followed by an evalutaion period.
In the evaluation period there will be some common english nouns and some names of Indian states (HPEs) each displayed for 1 sec and the separation between two consectutive words would also be 1 sec.
In different kinds of videos the HPEs will be distributed among the nouns in the following ways:
1) evenly (high-segmentation–routine condition)
2) nouns followed by the HPEs (low-segmentation–HPEs-last condition)
3) HPEs followed by the nouns (low-segmentation–HPEs-first condition)
4) random distribution (high-segmentaion-nonroutine condition)

Subejcts would be asked to recall the names of the HPEs for each kind of video and to give a estimate of the evalutaion period in comparison to the silent period

Expermiment 2: Retrospective time perception II
In this experiment we will give the subjects a sheet of paper having 20 rows of number with the following properties:

Each row will have certain fixed number of digits (0 to 9) followed by a blank space at the end
Each row will one digit underlined (not necessesarily the first)
There will two kinds of sheets
1) Routine type in which a fixed digit (say 5) is underlined in each row.
2) Non-routine type in which different digits are underlined
Complexity is kept the same in both kinds of sheets

The subjects are first given a fixed time interval to practice this task. This is followed by the evaluation period. After the task the subjects would be asked to give a estimate of the time they took to complete the task. This will be compared for the two different sheets

Expermiment 3 and 4: Prospective time perception
These experiments will be the same as Experiment 1 and 2 respectively, the only difference being that the subjects will be told beforehand that they will be asked about the time duration of each task thus, ensuring a prospective perception of time.

References

[1]Avni-Babad D.,Ritov I. 2003 Routine and the perception of time. J. Exp. Psychol. Gen. 132, 543–550 (link)
[2]Poynter, W. D., & Homa, D. (1983). Duration judgment and the experience of change. Perception & Psychophysics, 33, 548–560.