The sense of time refers to the coherent estimation of time periods in minutes and hours. Thought of more broadly, time perception can also apply to a sense of the day of the week, the time of day, or the duration of a task.
What is the sense of time?
The sense of time refers to the coherent estimation of time periods in minutes and hours. An adult human being is able to distinguish a few minutes from several by feeling. He can estimate how much time he will need for a task or how much time he has invested in it. In addition, he can estimate approximately how late it is likely to be at present, on which day of the week he is and how long he still has to work today, without necessarily having to look at the clock or the calendar. This estimation ability is called time perception or time sense. Babies and toddlers have no sense of time at all, but older children are already able to understand clocks and calendars. From about elementary school age, the sense of time develops, although there can still be strong deviations between the child’s assessment and reality. Teenagers, on the other hand, already have a very good sense of time, similar to that of adult humans. A perception of time also occurs in many mammals: Herd animals, for example, often stand at the feeding station at feeding time, if only because a leader knows that food will soon be available.
Function and task
The sense of time in humans develops through various influences. The methods of learning differ from each other. First, humans can roughly determine whether it is morning or afternoon, noon, evening, or night based on incident light and the position of the sun. It is believed that other mammals also orient themselves by these features. In contrast, humans also have the clock to help them and use a calendar, which introduces a learned sense of time. It may take some time before he learns to estimate minutes and hours and develop a sense of the day of the week, but since this knowledge is learned as early as elementary school age, any teenager is already confident in mastering it. The sense of time helps people plan their day and estimate how long planned activities will take. Of course, his own empirical values also help him in this. Of course, most people still have to look at the clock when it comes to planning to the minute, but it is not difficult for an adult, for example, to estimate the duration of the commute and thus be right. However, the sense of time also helps people to control important aspects of everyday life, such as food intake. Depending on habit, the sense of time will at some point notify the person that it would be time for the next meal. In this way, people can manage their everyday lives thanks to their sense of time and realistically plan what they can accomplish within certain time windows and what they need to delegate. Of course, the sense of time also helps with the feeling of boredom. While this can distort the perception of time somewhat and make a boring phase seem even longer than it really is, the sense of time also helps to realistically assess how long it will be before one can turn to other things again.
Diseases and ailments
The perception of time itself is innate. In the course of child development, a day-night rhythm is established sooner or later. Even children can distinguish whether it is morning or evening. The sense of time, on the other hand, based on a clock or calendar, is learned and presupposes that the person is mentally capable of learning and comprehending such content. Therefore, people with learning disabilities or intellectual disabilities may not be able to acquire the same sense of time as a person with normal learning ability. In the same way, it can happen with degenerative diseases that the person’s perception of time changes with them. This is characteristic of diseases such as Alzheimer’s or dementia, where the sense of time deteriorates with the severity and progress of the disease. It also does not dilute to the same degree in every patient. Some are still able to estimate the time relatively accurately, and the perception of time remains intact.Others, however, are so severely affected by their disease that it can be assumed that they no longer have any sense of time at all and one minute can seem like several hours to them. A similar, but fortunately only temporary, distortion of the sense of time can also result from taking medication or abusing drugs. When these substances affect a person’s consciousness, it is common to observe that the perception of time is distorted. Anyone who has already had a general anesthetic may be familiar with this effect – in the recovery room, it is usually impossible to estimate what time it is and how long the procedure and the time until waking up have lasted before looking at a clock. However, when the effect of such substances wears off, the sense of time also returns.
