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How does the way we measure time affect the way we perceive its passing?

Hypothetically, if a child was brought up without any reference to our human measurements of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days etc.), would it affect his/her concept of time passing?

For instance, we all have a general idea of how long 30 minutes is, but if someone was brought up without the ability to estimate how many minutes have passed, would they percieve time differently to the rest of us?


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  • Answered by Fekauff
  • on 2010-08-11 15:07:02

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From my view, the lack of language to form a view of time seriously impedes its perceptibility. For someone raised completely outside of a context where there's simply an inherited understanding of time, there's likely nothing obvious that links memories to the past. So, for that individual without the language for it, the idea that things happen in a particular order is a very advanced concept and not necessarily intuitive. In fact, it's not intuitive-- Einstein wrestled with this. For that individual without the construct of time, things are simply happening now and now and now, and the brain makes guesses about what will happen next based on what it perceives in the present. The conversation for time doesn't weigh into it.

I posit that the perception of time's passing (whether the experience of the observer's passage through time is faster or slower than expectations) relies very heavily on the observer having a view that, first, there is such a thing as time AND there are events expected to happen in the future AND the viewer has enough experience with time itself to evaluate whether he/she is moving toward the expected event at the usual rate.

For a child raised without a concept of time or any of the language that's time-based, nor any experience of measuring time, it's likely that time does not exist for them and that they likely experience everything as the present-- they don't have an awareness of "time passing" (a highly intellectual concept).

A related question is how different linguistic models of time (v. past/present/future or seconds/minutes/hours) affect the observer's experience of time-- which I'm now curious about.

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  • Asked by jamie534
  • on 2010-08-10 16:36:34
  • Member status
  • none

Last edited on: 2010-08-11 14:33:36

Categories: Human Body.

Tags: unanswered, time, experiment, humanbrain, Thoughtprocesses.

 

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