Yesterday's great expectations: Metamemory and retrospective subjective duration

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Abstract

What makes a past time period feel longer or shorter? We find evidence for a metamemory contrast effect in which the relationship between the number of events remembered from a time period and the number of events that one expects to remember from that period interact to determine felt duration. Specifically, days in the distant past can come to feel longer than more recent days (Study 1), which we propose arises due to the difference between expected memories and actual memories for that day (Study 2). The higher level of expected memories relative to actual memories for days closer to the present creates an expectation gap that underpins changes in subjective duration. Varying expectations for memories (Study 3) or the facilitation of recall for memories (Study 4) alters subjective duration such that the larger the gap, the shorter the subjective duration.

Section snippets

Time perception

Time perception relies on the ability to use multiple sources of information to piece together how long a duration feels. Which pieces of information are used to synthesize an approximation of the objective time depends on the elicitation paradigm in which we are asked about perceived duration (Zakay & Block, 1997). This has led to two dominant experimental paradigms: prospective and retrospective judgment of time (Block & Zakay, 1997). In the prospective paradigm, participants are made aware

Memory markers and metamemory

In our model, experiences of distinct events, episodes, or occurrences during time intervals are encoded as memory markers. These memory markers are then categorized, organized, and stored in memory bins (representing distinct periods of time such as days; Wyer & Srull, 1989; Ornstein, 1969). For instance, a vacationer who makes the same trek to cottage country every other weekend in the summer likely accumulates a similar set of memory markers in performing similar activities every trip, then

The present investigation

As a form of metamemory, we posit that memories – specifically, memory markers – are subject to contrast effects between metamemory expectations and actual memories, as determined by recalled memory markers. We propose that the relationship between expectations for memory and actual memories plays a significant role in retrospective time perception. Expectations are set by the individual at an implicit level, which can be met or violated (specifically, fallen short of), leading to a different

Study 1

We begin with the straightforward hypothesis that an interval of time (one day) that occurred at a greater temporal distance (one year ago or one week ago) should feel subjectively longer than that same interval of time that occurred closer in time (one day ago). Study 1A provides an initial test of this prediction, and Study 1B provides a conceptual replication conducted on a different day and using a different time period and a different design.

Method

We recruited one hundred volunteers from the Mechanical Turk platform hosted by Amazon to participate in a survey on remembering life events. In this sample, average age was 30.74 years (SD = 8.73; range: 18–57), with 68% male, 31% female, and 1% other/choosing not to respond. We conducted a sensitivity analysis using GPower (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner, & Lang, 2009), assuming an alpha level at 0.05 and 80% power, which revealed a minimum effect size of f = 0.28. Participants were randomly

Method

We recruited two hundred volunteers from the Mechanical Turk platform hosted by Amazon to participate in a survey on remembering life events. In this sample, no demographic information was collected. We conducted a sensitivity analysis using GPower (Faul et al., 2009), assuming an alpha level at 0.05 and 80% power, which revealed a minimum effect size of d = 0.20. Participants were asked to compare, directly, the subjective length of yesterday and the day one week ago. They did this using a

Study 2

Study 1 provided evidence that subjective duration expands with increasing distance into the past. Study 1A provided evidence for this in asking about a year ago in a between-subjects design, and the more conservative Study 1B provided a conceptual replication in asking about a week ago in a single-cell design. Our model accounts for this relationship as resulting from an expectation gap between what one expects to remember (via contextual metacognitive information) and what one can actually

Method

We recruited one hundred and fifty-eight volunteers from public locations (malls, shopping centers, parks) throughout Toronto, Ontario to participate in a survey on remembering life events. In this sample, no demographic information was collected. We conducted a sensitivity analysis using GPower (Faul et al., 2009), assuming an alpha level at 0.05 and 80% power, which revealed a minimum effect size of f = 0.22. Participants were randomly assigned to only one condition in the following 2 × 2

Study 2B

Study 1B had shown a difference in the subjective duration of a given day set either one day or seven days in the past. Accordingly, Study 2A, in providing the first evidence for our account related to a metamemory gap between expected and actual memories, similarly targeted a potential difference between these two time points in the past. The second step in our model requires showing that the difference between expectations of memories and actual memories, particularly as a function of how far

Study 3

While Study 1 had shown a difference in subjective duration for near and distant days, Study 2 provided evidence that as people consider days further in the past, the number of memories that they expect to have and the number of memories that they can actually recall converges (i.e., their difference decreases). Studies 3 and 4 integrate these findings, proposing that the latter accounts for the former. If subjective duration is influenced by metamemory differences between expected (as per

Study 4

Study 3 provides evidence that subjective duration is influenced by the relationship between the number of memories that people expect to have and the actual number of memories that they recall from a given time period. As predicted, we found evidence for a negative relationship between the expectancy gap (the difference between metacognitive expectations and actual memories) and subjective duration (i.e., as the difference between expected and actual memories increases, subjective duration

General discussion

Though time may flow undeterred on watches and screens, the subjective experience of its passage is anything but a consistent flow. The human internal temporal ticker tape rattles off seconds, minutes, weeks, and months in a way that causes subjective readings of it to differ from an objective standard. The present research makes two primary contributions to this literature on subjective time perception: the introduction of metacognitive expectations (to memory bins or storage units; Wyer &

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Emma Cheng and Amanda Lau provided assistance with data collection.

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