「時間の遅れ」 – 時間に対する私たちの認識が遅くなった

パンデミックの初期段階では、家に閉じこもっている人々の大半が、時間の流れが遅くなり、結果として孤独を感じたと述べています。

雑誌の報道によると 科学が進歩し、 の[{” attribute=””>COVID-19 pandemic has altered how individuals perceive the passing of time.

The majority of research participants (65%) reported feeling that time was moving more slowly at the conclusion of the first month of social isolation, which occurred in May 2020. This perception was termed by the researchers as “time expansion,” and they discovered that it was linked to feelings of isolation and a lack of enjoyable activities throughout the time period.

Even more people (75%) said they didn’t experience as much “time pressure,” which is the sensation that time is passing more quickly and leaving less time for activities of daily living and recreation. 90% of those surveyed claimed they were taking shelter at home during that time.

“We followed the volunteers for five months to see if this ‘snapshot’ of the start of the pandemic would change over time. We found that the feeling of time expansion diminished as the weeks went by, but we didn’t detect significant differences with regard to time pressure,” André Cravo, first author of the article, told Agência FAPESP. Cravo is a professor at the Federal University of ABC in São Paulo state, Brazil.

The research started on May 6, when 3,855 participants recruited via social media responded to a ten-item online questionnaire and completed a simple task meant to test their ability for short interval estimation (pressing start and stop buttons in 1, 3, and 12 seconds). They were then questioned about their daily activities the week before (including whether they had finished all required tasks and how much time they had set aside for leisure) as well as how they were feeling right now (happy, sad, lonely, etc).

“They were invited to return every week for further sessions, but not everyone did,” Cravo said. “In the final analysis, we considered data for 900 participants who answered the questionnaire for at least four weeks, albeit not all consecutively.”

Using time awareness scales from 0 to 100 that are standard for this type of survey, the researchers analyzed the answers and calculated the two parameters – time expansion and time pressure – to see whether they increased or decreased week by week.

“Besides a rise or fall on the scales, we also analyzed the factors that accompanied the changes. During the five-month period, we observed a similar pattern: in weeks when participants reported feeling lonely and experiencing less positive affect, they also felt time pass more slowly. In highly stressful situations, they felt time pass more quickly,” Cravo said.

When the first set of answers to the question on the passage of time was compared with the second, provided at the end of the first month of confinement, perceptions of time expansion had risen 20 points while time pressure had fallen 30 points, according to Raymundo Machado, a scientist at the Brain Institute of the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital (HIAE) in São Paulo, and last author of the article. “These results are evidently affected by memory bias, however, because no measurements were made before the pandemic,” he said.

Time slowed most for younger participants early in the pandemic, when compliance with social distancing rules was strictest. Except for age, demographic factors such as household size, occupation, and gender, had no influence on the results.

For the authors, this may be an effect of the sample profile. Most of the volunteers (80.5%) lived in the Southeast region. A large majority were women (74.32%). Most had completed secondary school, and a great many even had a university degree (71.78%). In terms of income, roughly a third were upper middle class (33.08%). Sizable minorities worked in education (19.43%) and healthcare (15.36%).

“This is typical of online surveys, where a majority are women living in the Southeast with high levels of formal education. The influence of demographics might have been more evident if the sample had represented the Brazilian population better,” Machado said.

Internal clock

Although the pandemic changed participants’ perceptions of the passage of time, it apparently did not affect their ability to sense duration, measured by the button-pressing task. “All of us are able to estimate short intervals. When the results of this time estimation test [including overestimation and underestimation of the intervals] それらは時間認識スコアと比較され、相関はありませんでした」とマチャドは言いました.

Cravo によると、科学文献からの証拠は、時間の経過が遅くなったり速くなったりするという感覚は、主に 2 つの要因によって影響を受けることを示しています。 例えば、仕事に遅刻した場合 [so that time is relevant in the context] そして私はバスを待たなければならない [unpredictable timing]あなたは、数分が経過しないという極端な認識を持っています。 休暇で楽しんでいるときは、その時ではなく、ただ飛んでいるように見えます。

過去の状況を思い出すと、認識が変わることがよくあります。 「休暇中に何をしたかを思い出すと、時間が長く感じられます。逆に、列に並んでいると、時間の経過が非常に遅くなりますが、後でその状況を思い出すと、時間が早く終わったかのように感じます。 」とクラヴォは言いました。

COVID-19 パンデミックの場合、ソーシャル ディスタンスの期間中、人々が時間の経過をどのように記憶するかはわかりません。 「カーニバル、6 月のお祭り、誕生日など、過去 2 年間で多くのマイルストーンをスキップしなければならなかったため、問題は未解決のままです」と彼は結論付けました。

参照: 「ソーシャル ディスタンス中の時間の経験: ブラジルでの COVID-19 パンデミックの初期の数か月間の縦断的研究」アンドレ マチョリ クラボ、グスタボ ブリト デ アゼベド、クリスティアーノ モライス ベラッチ アザリアス、ルイーズ キャサリン バーニー、フェルナンダ ダンタス ブエノ、ラファエル仕方。 ディ・カマルゴ、ヴァネッサ・カルネイロ・モリタ、エサウ・ベンチュラ・ボボ・シリウス、レナン・スキアヴォリン・レシオ、マテウス・シルベストリン、ライムンド・マチャド・デ・アゼベド・ネト、2022 年 4 月 13 日、 科学は進歩します。
DOI: 10.1126 / sciadv.abj7205

この研究は FAPESP によって資金提供されました。