How long is a second? Inside your sense of time

Close your eyes and wait for what feels like ten seconds, then check a clock. Try it a few times and your answers will spread out, sometimes over, sometimes under. There’s no ticking clock in your head. There’s a sense of time that is good but noisy, and noisy in ways you can predict.

The longer the wait, the bigger the miss

Timing errors grow with the length of what you’re timing. If you’re usually within a tenth of a second on a one-second wait, expect to be within about a second on a ten-second one. Researchers call this the scalar property: it’s Weber’s law, the rule that also governs how we judge weights and numbers, applied to time. It holds well in many tasks, though not in all of them; John Wearden and Helga Lejeune have reviewed where it bends.

That’s why Fively scores Hold as a share of the real time: half a second off on a 15-second hold is far better than half a second off on a one-second one.

Short feels long, long feels short

In 1868 the German physiologist Karl von Vierordt noticed that people overestimate short intervals and underestimate long ones, with a middle range judged about right. It’s known as Vierordt’s law. More recent work suggests it is largely a pull towards the middle of the durations being judged, and that the way an experiment is set up changes how strong it is.

Hold rounds run from about a third of a second to 15 seconds, so expect that pull. On the very short ones you’ll tend to hold too long; on the long ones, to let go too early.

Counting helps, within limits

Counting in your head, “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi”, makes timing more consistent: studies find less spread between tries when people count. It doesn’t fix everything, though. In one study with waits from 10 to 90 seconds, counting made people more consistent but no more accurate, and on the longest waits they overshot.

The answer is to know your own pace. Count along with a stopwatch a few times, until your “one” really is a second.

How to hold steadier

• Practise your counting pace against a stopwatch.
• Start counting the moment you press, not before and not after.
• On very short holds, let go a touch earlier than feels right; on long ones, a touch later.

Sources

• Lejeune, H., & Wearden, J. H. (2009). Vierordt’s The Experimental Study of the Time Sense (1868) and its legacy. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21(6), 941–960. doi:10.1080/09541440802453006
• Wearden, J. H., & Lejeune, H. (2008). Scalar properties in human timing: Conformity and violations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61(4), 569–587. doi:10.1080/17470210701282576
• Glasauer, S., & Shi, Z. (2021). The origin of Vierordt’s law: The experimental protocol matters. PsyCh Journal, 10(5), 732–741. doi:10.1002/pchj.464
• Grondin, S., Meilleur-Wells, G., & Lachance, R. (1999). When to start explicit counting in a time-intervals discrimination task: A critical point in the timing process of humans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25(4), 993–1004.
• Thönes, S., & Hecht, H. (2017). Counting does not improve the accuracy of long time productions. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79, 2576–2589. doi:10.3758/s13414-017-1407-5