ABSTRACT
Psychology.—There is not a single domain of knowledge that is unrelated to time. Yet all attempts to define it have been in vain, so varied are its facets. A testimony to the complexity of time is the diversity of ways it has been approached in psychology. To mention only a few, we find studies on the concepts of past, present, and future; studies on memory for events and the temporal organization of memories; ontogenetic research on the development of temporal concepts like duration and succession; and analyses of reasoning processes whenever space or speed is involved (following the pioneering work by Jean Piaget) (→COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT, MEMORY, SPACE). One question, though, has always headed the list of important issues in the psychology of time: the relationship between objective time and subjective time. Humans have devised increasingly accurate systems for measuring time, but the subjective assessment of duration still raises many questions. Time is not directly perceivable-indeed, none of our five senses is capable of perceiving it (→PERCEPTION).
