ABSTRACT
Aside from thinking about time in chronological and logical terms, we also have the feeling experience of time intervals and the pace of changes within that interval. Our phenomenal experience of duration is elastic and for the most part unreliable. The feeling of time passage varies both quantitatively when estimated against clock time, and qualitatively in terms of the feeling of the pace of parsed episodes in our life. Events that measure equally against clock time may feel much longer or shorter in duration. The more we live, the faster time seems to run, but also the more time it takes to reminisce all that happened. The inverse is true: if less happens, time feels like slowing down, leaving little to explore in memory. The number of changes in an interval of time affects our cognitive processing of that interval. The more changes, the more attention and the more information to process. There is also more to be memorized and more to be replayed. It either dramatically stretches or shrinks our phenomenal experience of duration that can be dramatically altered with drugs. Depressive and schizophrenic patients often report eerie feelings of temporal immobility. Likewise, when intensely immersed in an activity, we lose our track of time.
