Time perception

Time perception is a field of study within psychology, cognitive linguistics and neuroscience that refers to the subjective experience of time, which is measured by someone's own perception of the duration of the indefinite and unfolding of events. The perceived time interval between two successive events is referred to as perceived duration. Another person's perception of time cannot be directly experienced or understood, but it can be objectively studied and inferred through a number of scientific experiments. Time perception is a construction of the brain that is manipulable and distortable under certain circumstances. These temporal illusions help to expose the underlying neural mechanisms of time perception.

Pioneering work, emphasizing species-specific differences, was conducted by Karl Ernst von Baer. Experimental work began under the influence of the psycho-physical notions of Gustav Theodor Fechner with studies of the relationship between perceived and measured time.

William J. Friedman (1993) also contrasted two theories for a sense of time:

Another theory involves the brain's subconscious tallying of "pulses" during a specific interval, forming a biological stopwatch. This theory alleges that the brain can run multiple biological stopwatches at one time depending on the type of task one is involved in. The location of these pulses and what these pulses actually consist of is unclear. This model is only a metaphor and does not stand up in terms of brain physiology or anatomy.

The present is the time duration wherein a state of consciousness is experienced as being in the present. The term was first introduced by the philosopher E. R. Clay in 1882 (E. Robert Kelly), and was further developed by William James. James defined the specious present to be "the prototype of all conceived times... the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible". In "Scientific Thought" (1930), C. D. Broad further elaborated on the concept of the specious present, and considered that the specious present may be considered as the temporal equivalent of a sensory datum. A version of the concept was used by Edmund Husserl in his works and discussed further by Francisco Varela based on the writings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty.

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