ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes major theories and bodies of evidence concerning fundamental experiences and concepts of psychological time, linking aging-related changes to their underlying cognitive and (more elementary) neural substrates. Cognitive psychologists typically agree that all major experiences and conceptions of psychological time are mediated by memory structures, procedures, and processes. The chapter discusses different views of mechanisms hypothesized to account for the cognitive aging-related effects. It presents empirical evidence illustrating aging-related changes in memory for temporal order. Aging-related variance in performance is assumed to be caused by a generally decreased speed of performing mental operations. Aging-related effects on duration judgments have been evaluated using many different types of experimental tests. Over the past years, considerable progress has been made on the analysis and characterization of the mental structures and mechanisms underlying the memory for time and aging-related changes in psychological time.
