Time Out

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to see if one's time perception is altered based on the activity one is performing. I believe that someone involved in an activity will feel that less time has passed than someone sitting idle or waiting for something special. Methods/Materials 100 randomly selected students, ranging from ages 8-13 were tested individually in one of three situations. In the first situation, the students were given a word search to do for three minutes. After three minutes the student was asked to estimate the amount of time they thought had passed using a list of times ranging from thirty seconds to over five minutes using thirty second intervals. The second situation was the same except the student was offered a chocolate which they had to spend the three minutes waiting for. For the last situation the student had to sit in a room doing nothing for the three minutes. Results The results showed that on average, the students waiting for a chocolate thought the most amount of time had passed and the students doing the word search thought the least amount of time had passed. Conclusions/Discussion The results may indicate that when someone is busy they don#t pay attention/realize the amount of time that is passing. It also suggests that when someone is eagerly anticipating something, they pay attention to the amount of time passing, leading them to think more time has passed.

Awards (1)

• Honorable Mention

Competition history

• CSEF 2014 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0406

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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