Time passes too fast? Then recall the past! - Evidence for a reminiscence heuristic in passage of time judgments.

Memory-based approaches suggest that retrospective judgments concerning the passage of lifetime are based on available meaningful experiences. However, an open question is whether passage of time judgments reflect the objective amount of important experiences or rather the amount of memories that are currently activated in the moment of judging. To examine this issue, we asked 473 participants to judge the passage of the last five years either before or after recalling as many important autobiographical events as possible from the last five years. Activating memories before the judgment slowed the experienced passage of time, but only if participants recalled at least four memories. For participants recalling less than four memories, the opposite effect was found: few activated memories had even an accelerating effect. Interestingly, the experienced speed of time did not continuously decrease with a rising number of memories activated: Below and above the threshold of four memories, passage of time judgments were unrelated to the number of activated memories. These results indicate that passage of time judgments are based on currently activated memories, suggesting that the common phenomenon of time flying reflects the effect of a reminiscence heuristic.