Scientists have discovered why adults and children perceive time differently

 It is well known that the perception of time changes with age, and now Hungarian scientists have been able to find out why this is happening.

The perception of time by children and adults differs significantly. A forty-minute seminar may seem short for an adult, and for many first-graders, sitting through the same amount of time in class is a difficult test. Of course, many factors affect the perception of time, from a person's temperament to saturation with emotionally charged events, but researchers from Etvos Loran University (Hungary) decided to study the influence of one of the main factors: the age of the subject.

The experiment involved 138 people, who were divided into three groups: "preschoolers" (4-5 years), "students" (9-10 years) and "adults" (18 years and older). All participants were offered to watch several one-minute films - fragments of a popular animated series, balanced with visual and acoustic saturation, but differing in the variety of events.

One video was a mini-story (a policeman saves animals and arrests a thief), the other showed almost nothing (six people left in a rowing boat). Half of the subjects were asked to watch an "active" film first and then a "monotonous" one, the other half the opposite. At the end of the experiment, participants were asked to answer the question: which video was longer?

The results were different for all three age groups: two-thirds of the preschoolers said the "active" video was longer, while three-quarters of the "adults" said the police video was shorter than the rowing video. Judging by the results of a survey of "schoolchildren", the change in the perception of time from "preschool" to "adult" occurs in children around the age of seven: "schoolchildren" are also more likely to call "monotonous" videos longer, although not they were as unequivocal on this point as "adults".

To explain the difference in time perception between adults and children, researchers have turned to the concept of heuristics, a set of rules and methods for making complex decisions quickly and without much thought or calculation. Especially for a young child, the more he can tell about the movie he's seen, the longer it seems to him. With adults, everything is different: as we grow up, we get used to the concept of absolute time, but we remain hostages of our own perception, when the seconds drag on like chewing gum in a boring meeting, and when watching a fascinating movie, we forget to look at the clock.

Thus, getting acquainted with the concept of absolute time, flowing at its own pace and measurable, changes the very perception of time in our brain - entering the world of adults, children are forced to rebuild their perception of time, because now it is not them themselves, but the clock on their hand, which determines the duration of this or that event.