Annie Chen

Inquiry 1 ReflectionAppend to front of Inquiry 1 when submitted

Name: __Annie Chen ___ EID: __asc2533___UGTA: _______Kathryn McElhinney_______
Inquiry 1 Topic:__ ________________ Perception of Time _______________________
Give yourself a grade. If you were assigning a letter grade as a college teacher in an honors
course, what grade would you give your own Inquiry 1 (A through F)? __B___
Explain the reasoning for your grade.
I would say that my inquiry is original and interesting, but the overall design of the project
is too simple to be considered a truly excellent honors college-level research experiment.
UGTA reflection. Candidly assess your interaction with your UGTA. Was he or she a help or a
hindrance to you in creating a good inquiry? If they were a hindrance, what can be done to turn
him or her into an asset for the next inquiry?
Kathryn was great! She asked us questions that helped facilitate our thinking, and made
sure our ideas were quantifiable and doable within the given time and available materials.
Time Management. Did you give yourself enough time to do a good job on the inquiry?
Yes _X__ No ___
Will you make any modifications to the way you manage your time in performing Inquiry II? In
particular, what aspect of Inquiry I surprised you in terms of how much time it took you to
complete it? What will you do to become more efficient?
Fortunately, after I got my first idea rejected, I quickly found a decent inquiry topic and I
got started with my data collection immediately the day after I got approval from my UGTA.
Being an introvert by nature, it was difficult for me to go out and actively search for people
to participate in my research. It took me longer than I expected to work up the courage to
approach total strangers and ask for their help. Besides my own personal problems, there
wasnt really anything that prevented me from getting the job done quickly and efficiently.
Independent Inquiry. Consider your educational background and past assignment prompts in
relation to this one as you answer this question: What do you think of independent inquiry as a
way to learn? If you dont care for it, why not?
I dont think that it is a bad way to learn its just not my preferred method. I agree that it
is a great way to facilitate creativity and independent thought, but I rather like following a
set curriculum and learning the things that we are required to learn in a traditional
classroom. Dont get me wrong I love having free-reign, but being given free-reign in the
classroom is like being thrown into a pool without learning how to swim. There is simply
too much floundering about for my liking. I prefer being in control of the outcomes of my
efforts.

Annie Chen

The Internet and Learning. Did you rely solely on what was already in your head in writing up
the report or did you go to written sources (books, journals, internet) to supplement and develop
a better background? If you didnt get help, what might you have learned about that would have
made for a better discussion of your results? Write down a URL that you did use, or should have
used.
http://www.brainpickings.org/2013/07/15/time-warped-claudia-hammond/
I used this website to get background on the different theories on time perception. I also
used http://www.drjamesdobson.org/Solid-Answers/Answers?a=ff773023-2693-410db9e1-662f6985be4e to get a better idea of the physical differences between men and
women.
Getting ready for Inquiry II. What were the most challenging issues for you with Inquiry 1
(consider, for example, idea development, background knowledge, poor experimental design,
inability to assess data, etc.)? What do you plan to do so that this is not a problem on Inquiry 2?
Experimental design finding a design that is effective, efficient, and consistent without it
being overly simple is a hard thing to do. On Inquiry 2, I think I will do some more
background research to get a better idea of what kinds of experimental methods are good
models to base my own design off of.

Annie Chen

Mind Time
The human perception of time is a phenomenon that has long been under the scrutiny of
both neuroscientists and psychologists alike. Why does time seem to slow to a trickle when
were in mortal danger? Why does a vacation feel like it passes by in the blink of an eye? The
human brain is a complicated mechanism, and we can only make educated guesses at why our
perception of time varies according to different factors. Psychology writer Claudia Hammond
claims that our brains create their own experiences of time mind time and that we have the
power to change the way we perceive time. Others support a more mathematical explanation: the
proportionality theory. The theory is formed on the basis that small amounts of time grow more
insignificant the longer a human lives. To a person who is 80 years old, a year is only a small
fraction of his entire life. To an 8-year-old, the fraction is much greater. Another theory suggests
that the pace of our lives in general has picked up, therefore making things from the past be
perceived as slower as well as the passage of time. There are a multitude of other theories
floating out in the field of neuropsychology, all of them attempting to take shots at solving the
great mystery of the human mind. Although we cannot pinpoint exactly how our minds perceive
time, we do know some factors that affect our perception of time: emotions, absorption,
expectations, memory, the demand of a task, and even temperature, to name a few. However, all
of the factors are intangible and are dependent on the environment. This is where I come in
what if there was something purely physical that contributes to our perception of time? That
question was the birth of my own special project, my brain-child that would cost me a good
amount of time as well as dignity but would come out with some interesting results; does gender
affect a humans perception of time?

Annie Chen

In a quality scientific study, the sample size needs to be large to ensure the least possible
amount of error. The chosen sample consisted of 100 total subjects, 50 men and 50 women, all
18-years-old college freshmen to maintain a controlled variable. Due to the large sample size, I
needed an efficient yet consistent method of carrying out the experiment. To test my subjects
perception of time, I would ask the person to estimate a minute to the best of his or her abilities
while I kept track of the actual time with a stopwatch.
The difference in the results between men and women was intriguing. Women, in general,
tended to overestimate the time, with an average of 70.145 seconds. On the other hand, men
tended to underestimate, coming out with an average of 56.208 seconds. When graphed on
histograms, both the males and females exhibited a relatively normal distribution the centers
were just shifted depending on the mean. There were no extreme outliers, as all of the data fell
within three standard deviations of the mean. Refer to Figures 1 and 2. Taking the data and
putting it to a box-and-whisker plot, the graphs further show a significant difference in the times
for men as opposed to women. Also, men seemed to have a smaller range of times compared to
women. 50 percent of men fell within 50.675 seconds to 62.840 seconds, while 50 percent of
women fell within 61.895 seconds to 81.210 seconds. Refer to Figure 3. Based purely on the
physical data, it would be safe to make the assumption that gender does indeed have an effect on
the perception of time in 18-year-old humans.
Given the results of the research, there could be several possible explanations as to why
men and women differ in their perception of time. Men generally have higher metabolisms than
women, due to the fact that they have more muscle mass, heavier bones, and less body fat. The
faster rate of energy consumption could affect the brains chemical workings, resulting in an
altered sense of time. An average mans heart is also about 25 percent larger than the average

Annie Chen

womans, which means that mens resting heart rates are relatively slower than womens. In a
phenomenon that I have noticed with my own body, a persons perception of tempo is skewed
depending on the rate of the heart. If I listen to the same song in the morning right after I wake
up and after I finish working out, I perceive the tempo to be faster when I listened to the song
right after I wake up. This sensation could play a part in the fact that men perceive time to go by
faster than women. Because mens heartbeats are slower, tempo (and in a sense, time) is
perceived to run faster. The opposite would be true for women: because womens heartbeats are
faster relative to mens, they would perceive time to be slower. Besides size differences, males
and females also differ in brain composition. For example, brains of both sexes process the
neurochemical serotonin, which helps regulate the sleep cycle as well as remain calm, but the
difference in the way the chemical is processed makes males more inclined to be physically
impulsive. To be put bluntly, it is harder for males to sit still. This natural tendency of ants in
the pants may also be an explanation as to why the results of my research came out the way
they did maybe the men perceived time to be faster because they simply wanted the minute to
be over sooner.
Like in all unprofessional experiments, the conditions were not ideal to assume causation,
that gender does in fact affect perception of time. As I had to survey a large sample size in a
limited amount of time, I chose the most convenient people around me to test. Classmates who
sat around me in class, friends who I met up with for study groups, the girls who lived in the
rooms next to mine people who are not necessarily an accurate representation of the freshman
population. Ideally, I would have used simple random sampling to get a good distribution across
the different colleges. Also due to my convenience sampling, I could not control the environment
in which my subjects were tested in. Some were tested in classrooms, and others the dormitories,

Annie Chen

libraries, and an assortment of other places. Since environment is one of the factors that was
identified as having an effect on the perception of time, keeping the environment constant would
have been monumental in contributing to the validity of the research results. Another small but
somewhat significant error that may have occurred in the experiment was that of cheating. I
asked my subjects to count to a minute in their heads, but I am not psychic I cannot tell if they
really counted out the seconds or if they used another method of estimating the time. A few
people got suspiciously close to one perfect minute, with one subject only being 48 hundredths
of a second off. It could have been an honest estimate or just sheer dumb luck, but they could
have also used a familiar song or other means in order to pinpoint a minute so accurately.
Although the data suggests that gender has an effect on time perception, the conclusion is not
concrete due to the possibility of multiple errors within the testing procedure.
The purpose of scientific research is not, as unbelievable as it may sound, for personal
enjoyment (although it may be a part of it) or unconventional torture. Research provides valuable
insight as to how the world around us functions, but more importantly, can lead to discoveries
that may give us greater insight about ourselves. That being said, why is the perception of time
important to humanity? Surprisingly, there are several psychological disorders linked to the
perception of time. Depression, for one, is a common disorder among humans. Studies have
shown that people who are depressed are able to perceive time more accurately because they are
less affected by the environment. Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
perceive time to go by very slowly. Schizophrenic people perceive time to go by faster than it
actually does. Essentially, this means that a test of perception of time could potentially be an
effective indicator of a psychological disorder. However, if the results of my study are true and
applicable, gender would be added to the vast pool of variables affecting time perception, and

Annie Chen

different tests would have to be conducted in order to correct for the discrepancies between the
sexes.
Figure 1

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Figure 2

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Annie Chen

Figure 3

Females vs. Males

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Bibliography
Dobson, James. "Physical Differences Between Men and Women." My Family Talk. Dr. James
Dobson's Family Talk, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
"How Male and Female Brains Differ." WebMD. WebMD, 11 Apr. 2005. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
Popova, Maria. "Why Time Slows Down When Were Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets
Warped on Vacation." Brain Pickings RSS. Brain Pickings, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.
"Time Perception." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Sept. 2014.