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Children's perception of time remains a mystery
A household debate over when time feels fastest or slowest reveals a deeper question: how do children experience the passage of hours, days, and years? For many youngsters, car rides drag while weekends on the sofa fly by. Birthdays and Christmas feel agonizingly distant once they pass, stretching the wait for the next celebration into what seems like an eternity.
Psychologist Teresa McCormack of Queen's University Belfast calls the study of children and time a neglected field. "We still don't know when children develop a clear distinction between past and future, even though that framework shapes how adults structure their lives," she says. While children quickly learn routines like mealtimes and bedtimes, McCormack stresses this isn't the same as grasping linear time.
How language and memory shape time
Adults rely on clocks and calendars to think about time independently of events. Children, however, take years to master temporal language-terms like "before," "after," "tomorrow," and "yesterday." Their judgments about time also depend on whether they're asked during or after an event. "The years from a child's birth to their adulthood seem to vanish in hindsight," McCormack notes, "but each day of parenting feels endless in the moment."
Research shows that children under six can sense how quickly a lesson passes, but their perception ties more to emotion than actual duration. The link between speed and duration solidifies later. Memory also plays a role. Zoltán Nádasdy, a psychologist at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, found that children and adults perceive time differently when watching videos. In a 1987 experiment, later repeated, young children judged an action-packed clip as longer than a slow rowing scene, while most adults felt the opposite.
The role of heuristics and routine
Without a dedicated "time organ," humans use approximations called heuristics. For children, this might mean judging time by how much they can discuss an event. School introduces schedules, replacing early heuristics with structured routines. McCormack adds that children's impatience and focus also affect their sense of time. "The more attention you pay to time passing, the slower it seems," she explains.
Studies by Sylvie Droit-Volet and John Wearden confirm that emotional state influences time perception in adults. Happiness speeds up time, while sadness slows it. During lockdowns, stress and monotony made days feel longer. Frightening films or unpleasant experiences, like crowded commutes, also distort time.
Physical changes and aging
Adrian Bejan, a mechanical engineer at Duke University, proposes a physical explanation. As we age, the brain receives fewer "mental images" per second due to longer neural pathways and degradation. This compression makes time feel faster. Neurodegenerative changes may also slow information processing, though research is ongoing.
Visual clutter and scene complexity further affect perception. A recent study found that larger, memorable scenes stretch time, while cluttered ones contract it. Heart rate, which peaks in infancy and declines with age, may also influence time perception through interoceptive signals.
Can adults recapture childhood time?
Routine and future-focused thinking accelerate time for adults. Novelty, however, can slow it down. A two-week summer camp might feel more memorable than an entire school year because of the density of new experiences. "Judgments about time partly reflect how many novel events we remember," McCormack says.
Physical activity may help adults slow their perception of time, though exhaustion can have the opposite effect. Bejan suggests breaking routines: "Do something unusual. Tell a joke. Share an idea. Surprise yourself."
"Slow down a little. Force yourself to do new things. Treat yourself to surprises."
Adrian Bejan, Duke University
