Changes in Subjective Time and Self during Meditation.

This study examined the effects of meditative states in experienced meditators on present-moment awareness, subjective time, and self-awareness while assessing meditation-induced changes in heart-rate variability and breathing rate. A sample of 22 experienced meditators who practiced meditation techniques stressing awareness of the present moment (average 20 years of practice) filled out subjective scales pertaining to sense of time and the bodily self and accomplished a metronome task as an operationalization of present-moment awareness before and after a 20 min meditation session (experimental condition) and a 20 min reading session (control condition) according to a within-subject design. A mixed pattern of increased sympathetic and parasympathetic activity was found during meditation regarding heart-rate measures. Breathing intervals were prolonged during meditation. Participants perceived their body boundaries as less salient during meditation than while reading the story; they also felt time passed more quickly and they paid less attention to time during meditation. No significant differences between conditions became apparent for the metronome task. This is probably the first quantitative study to show how the experience of time during a meditation session is altered together with the sense of the bodily self.

The Blursday database as a resource to study subjective temporalities during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns triggered worldwide changes in the daily routines of human experience. The Blursday database provides repeated measures of subjective time and related processes from participants in nine countries tested on 14 questionnaires and 15 behavioural tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 2,840 participants completed at least one task, and 439 participants completed all tasks in the first session. The database and all data collection tools are accessible to researchers for studying the effects of social isolation on temporal information processing, time perspective, decision-making, sleep, metacognition, attention, memory, self-perception and mindfulness. Blursday includes quantitative statistics such as sleep patterns, personality traits, psychological well-being and lockdown indices. The database provides quantitative insights on the effects of lockdown (stringency and mobility) and subjective confinement on time perception (duration, passage of time and temporal distances). Perceived isolation affects time perception, and we report an inter-individual central tendency effect in retrospective duration estimation.

The subjective experience of time during the pandemic in Germany: The big slowdown.

Several COVID-19 studies on the felt passage of time have been conducted due to the strong feeling of time distortion many people have experienced during the pandemic. Overall, a relative decelaration of time passage was generally associated with negative affect and social isolation; a relative acceleration was associated with an increase in routine in daily life. There is some variability in results depending on the country of study and COVID-19 restrictions introduced, participants' demographics, and questionnaire items applied. Here we present a study conducted in May 2021 in Germany including n = 500 participants to assess time perception, emotional reactions, and attitudes towards the countermeasures. The passage of time judgments (POTJ) for the preceding 12 months during the pandemic were compared to data addressing the same question posed in previous studies conducted before the outbreak of COVID-19. The previous year was rated as having passed relatively slower during the pandemic compared to the ratings from before the pandemic. The duration judgments (DJ) of the 14 months since the start of the pandemic showed a bimodal distribution with both relatively shorter and relatively longer DJs. Higher levels of several negative emotions, as well as less social satisfaction, were associated with prolonged DJs and partially slower POTJs. Fear for health was not linked with the subjective experience of time, but exploratory analyses suggested that higher levels of fear were linked to more positive evaluations and approval of the governmental countermeasures. Those who reported higher levels of negative, agitated-aggressive emotions showed lower levels of consent with these measures.

Disrupting times in the wake of the pandemic: Dispositional time attitudes, time perception and temporal focus.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has majorly disrupted many aspects of people's lives, provoking psychosocial distress among students. People's positive and negative attitudes towards the past, present and future were a dispositional pre-COVID-19 reality. Faced with a pandemic, people have reported disruptions in the speed of passing time. People can shift their attention more towards the past, present or future when major changes in society occur. These aspects of psychological time would be key to understanding the quality of psychosocial adjustment to the pandemic. We hypothesized that dispositional time attitudes impact psychosocial distress because they would trigger situational changes in our time perception and temporal focus. Methods: One hundred and forty-four university students in Uruguay responded to self-report questionnaires online while in-person classes were cancelled. Students reported on shifts in temporal focus, changes in time awareness and dispositional time attitudes. Reactive psychological, social and learning environment distress were reported. Results: Students reported substantial changes in time perception and temporal focus. A correlation matrix showed significant relationships between time attitudes, focus and awareness. For example, psychological distress was correlated with negative time attitudes, slower passage of time, boredom, blurred sense of time and shifting focus to the past. Mediation models were derived. The indirect effect of time attitudes on psychological distress was significant through past focus. Discussion: Dispositional time attitudes would impact students' capacity to cope with the pandemic. Situational shifts in temporal focus and perception were prevalent and can be viewed as temporal coping mechanisms in the wake of powerful societal change. Our mediation models showed that those with negative time attitudes experienced more psychological distress because they shifted their attention to the past. Future directions for research and practical implications are discussed.