I’ve researched time for 15 years – here’s how my perception of it has changed
by RUTH OGDEN
Time is one of those things that most of us take for granted. We spend our lives portioning it into work-time, family-time and me-time. Rarely do we sit and think about how and why we choreograph our lives through this strange medium. A lot of people only appreciate time when they have an experience that makes them realise how limited it is.
My own interest in time grew from one of those “time is running out” experiences. Eighteen years ago, while at university, I was driving down a country lane when another vehicle strayed onto my side of the road and collided with my car. I can still vividly remember the way in which time slowed down, grinding to a near halt, in the moments before my car impacted with the oncoming vehicle. Time literally seemed to stand still. The elasticity of time and its ability to wax and wane in different situations shone out like never before. From that moment I was hooked.
I have spent the last 15 years trying to answer questions such as: Why does time slow down in near death situations? Does time really pass more quickly as you get older? How do our brains process time?
My attempts to answer these questions often involve putting people into extreme situations to explore how their experience of time is affected. Some of the participants in my experiments have been given electric shocks to induce pain , others have traversed 100-metre-high crumbling bridges (albeit in virtual reality), some have even spent 12 months in isolation on Antarctica. At the heart of this work is an attempt to understand how our interaction with our environment shapes our experience of time.
The Conversation for more
Is the future behind you?
by RUTH OGDEN
I magine the future. Where is it for you? Do you see yourself striding towards it? Perhaps it’s behind you. Maybe it’s even above you.
And what about the past? Do you imagine looking over your shoulder to see it?
How you answer these questions will depend on who you are and where you come from. The way we picture the future is influenced by the culture we grow up in and the languages we are exposed to.
For many people who grew up in the UK, the US and much of Europe, the future is in front of them, and the past is behind them. People in these cultures typically perceive time as linear. They see themselves as continually moving towards the future because they cannot go back to the past.
In some other cultures, however, the location of the past and the future are inverted. The Aymara, a South American Indigenous group of people living in the Andes, conceptualise the future as behind them and the past in front of them.
Scientists discovered this by studying the gestures of the Aymara people during discussions of topics such as ancestors and traditions. The researchers noticed that when Aymara spoke about their ancestors, they were likely to gesture in front of themselves, indicating that the past was in front. However, when they were asked about a future event, their gesture seemed to indicate that the future was perceived as behind.
Look to the future
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