If every day seems to go by in a blur, try to seek out new and interesting experiences, researchers suggested, after it was found that memorable images pass the time.
Researchers have previously found that louder experiences seem to last longer, while focusing on the clock also causes time to dilate, or drag.
Now researchers have discovered that the more memorable an image is, the more likely a person is to think they’ve been looking at it longer than they really have. Such images were also easier for participants to remember the next day.
Prof Martin Wiener, co-author of the study based at George Mason University in the US, said the findings could help improve artificial intelligence that interacts with humans.
“One idea might be, well, if we can extend a perceived interval while showing an image to a person, that image might be better remembered 24 hours later,” Wiener said.
Writing in the journal Nature Human BehaviorWiener and colleagues described how they showed participants scenes of six different sizes and six different levels of clutter for between 300 and 900 ms, and asked them to indicate whether they thought the duration was long or short.
The results from two groups, totaling around 100 people, revealed that participants were more likely to think they had been looking at small, highly cluttered scenes for a shorter amount of time – such as a cluttered pantry – than the was the case, while the reverse happened when people watched. large scenes with little clutter, such as the interior of an airplane hangar.
The team also conducted experiments involving 69 participants that found that images known from previous work to be more memorable were more likely to be judged to have been shown for longer than was the case.
The important thing was that the effect goes both ways.
“We also found that the longer the perceived subjective duration of an image, the more likely you were to remember it the next day,” Wiener said.
When the team ran an analysis using deep learning models of the visual system, they discovered that more memorable images were processed faster. What’s more, processing speed for an image was correlated with how long participants thought they looked at it.
“Images can be more memorable because they are processed more quickly and efficiently in the visual system, and this drives the perception of time,” Wiener said.
The team suggests that time dilation may serve a purpose, allowing us to gather information about the world around us.
“When we see things that are more important or relevant, like things that are more memorable, we expand our sense of time to get more information,” Wiener said.
However, he noted that the work does not rule out the possibility that the brain also has an internal clock to keep time, which would explain how different aspects of an experience can be perceived synchronously.
Wiener also said the memory findings had broader implications.
“What this suggests is that if we want time to feel the way things are [taking] longer, we must look for things that are themselves more memorable. And by that I mean things that are new and interesting and new to us,” he said. “This is why a vacation can last much longer than, say, the equivalent amount of time during your daily routines.”
