ABSTRACT

Events full of change are likely to be perceived as lasting longer than moments void of stimuli (Poynter, 1983). This study sought to understand routine and retrospective time estimation and the reason why time estimation gets skewed. Four groups were studied: the Prospective Routine group, Prospective Nonroutine, Retrospective Routine, and Retrospective Nonroutine. Groups participated in a memory task; however, the Prospective group was told there would be a time estimation task. Groups heard a 15-second silent clip. Routine groups heard a recording of a list of nouns and celebrity names in a routine order. Nonroutine groups heard the list in a randomized order. Instruments included a written time estimation and a line comparison task, similar to Avni-Babad & Ritov (2003). Groups recalled the number of words as well as specific words. Ninety-three students participated. A post hoc analysis, a 2-way ANOVA, and Pearson correlation tests were completed. It was expected that Routine resulted in an underestimation of time in Retrospective conditions and an overestimation in Prospective. Nonroutine tasks would result in an overestimation of time in Retrospective and underestimation in Prospective. Nonroutine tasks would result in more remembered words than routine tasks, in both conditions. The results did not confirm the hypotheses. Parents’ education levels significantly predicted GPA and number of words remembered. The line task and the written time task were strongly positively correlated, proving validity of the line task. Lastly, Group 2 and Group 3 were correlated with time. Even though the groups were opposite conditions, they had identical time estimations. It is likely the phenomenon that exists at 1 minute and exists throughout our lifetime in long-term memory ceases to exist at 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Future research includes testing different time increments to determine when the phenomenon of skewed time estimation begins and ends. The line task could be used in future research for time estimation because it was validated in this study.