Metacognitive Questionnaire on Time: Feeling of the Passage of Time

Abstract

The aim of our studies was to design a Metacognitive Questionnaire on Time (MQT) that assesses inter-individual variations in the awareness of factors affecting the experience of the passage of time. In the first study, 532 young adults were asked to reply to an initial questionnaire consisting of 106 questions relating to many different factors (e.g., psychostimulant, body temperature, age, attention) that could affect how time is perceived. Factorial analyses allowed us to extract two discriminant factors, one relating to attention and the other to emotion. The second study sought to validate the final 24-item questionnaire by gathering data from 212 university students. Confirmatory Factorial Analyses (AMOS) showed that the MQT has the same two-factor structure. The third study assessed the construct validity of the MQT by measuring the correlation between the MQT scores and the scores with other questionnaires measuring close or different constructs. In sum, these studies enabled us to develop an easy-to-use questionnaire whereby it is possible to distinguish between individuals according to their subjective feeling of the passage of time. In addition, the participants’ responses on the MQT showed that they were more aware of attention-related factors than of emotion-related factors that might produce time distortions, and that women were more aware of their own temporal distortions than men.

Experience Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the experience of passage of time in young and elderly adults

“…A long tradition (going back in formal models to Treisman, 1963) has proposed that people possess an arousalsensitive internal clock that they may use for their judgements of durations. Our study thus suggests that the participants were perhaps in part aware of fluctuations of temporal estimation with arousal levels (Lamotte et al, 2014). Wearden, O'Donoghue, Ogden, and Montgomery (2014) provide examples of situations where passage of time judgements seem to be related to reported arousal levels.…”

“…As regards the actual in-the-moment experience of passage of time (present time), Lamotte, Chakroun, Droit-Volet, and Izaute (2014) recently assessed, with a broad range of questions (106 questions), individuals' knowledge about different factors that may affect their experience of time passage. Despite the multitude of possible effects mentioned, statistical analyses extracted only two significant factors, one related to emotion and the other to attention.…”

Subjective expansion of extended time-spans in experienced meditators

“…Two inventories were employed to control for potential factors that could influence and explain performance and subjective ratings between groups: the German version of the international physical activity questionnaire (IPAQ; Ainsworth et al, 2000 ) assesses the amount of physical activity over the last week; with the Kurzfragebogen zur aktuellen Beanspruchung (short questionnaire on current demands, KAB; Müller and Basler, 1993 ) the awareness of everyday demands (and resulting stress level) is assessed; this inventory thus can be used as a proxy measure for the momentary well-being of an individual. Both physical activity ( Sysoeva et al, 2013 ) and emotional well-being ( Lamotte et al, 2014 ) have shown to influence time judgments.…”

Time Perspective and Emotion Regulation as Predictors of Age-Related Subjective Passage of Time

“…Moreover, to address the question of age-related differences concerning the subjective passage of time over past time intervals of the last week, month, year, and ten years, additional questionnaires were employed, namely the scales for experiencing emotions (SEE) [ 38 , 39 ], a short form of the five factor personality inventory NEO-FFI (BFI-K; Big Five Inventory—Kurzform [ 40 ]) of the five factor personality inventory (the NEO-FFI), and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) [ 41 ]. Strong emotions in healthy individuals such as with trait-anxiety lead to a slower passage of felt time [ 42 ]; impulsive individuals more often overestimate duration and complain that time passes too slowly [ 5 ]. Relating to the two open questions mentioned above we aimed at conducting this exploratory study: (1) associating for the first time inventories relating to the time perspective with measures of time awareness; and (2) investigating potential factors related to age-related differences in retrospective judgments of various life spans.…”