TIME ESTIMATION
| Name | Place | ||
| Age | Date | ||
| ORDER OF TESTS | TIME IN SECONDS | ||
| Time of Intervals. | Male (17 years) | Female (17 years) | |
| No. 1 | No. 9 | ||
| 1. Idleness | 108" | 70" | 120" |
| 2. Reading | 36 | 30 | 118 |
| 3. Writing | 72 | 36 | 60 |
| 4. Estimating | 18 | 15 | 30 |
| 5. Reading | 108 | 90 | 68 |
| 6. Idleness | 36 | 35 | 60 |
| 7. Writing | 18 | 10 | 10 |
| 8. Estimating | 108 | 100 | 125 |
| 9. Reading | 72 | 100 | 66 |
| 10. Idleness | 72 | 75 | 58 |
| 11. Writing | 36 | 25 | 22 |
| 12. Estimating | 72 | 60 | 60 |
| 13. Reading | 18 | 14 | 15 |
| 14. Writing | 108 | 130 | 59 |
| 15. Estimating | 36 | 30 | 41 |
| 16. Idleness | 18 | 10 | 18 |
How did you estimate the interval when you were asked to estimate it as accurately as you could?
n o f e y m i q r s a d r g d e s t k n w e r a x u p x z y o n d f n o d c a e h p m a l g s r w y t b c k p s o n q a r v q c o m p v r i c p k t o s n q z r l x m i h u v o q g P p f u t o i c n g s c a r n o t c d a a o b i a r s a d e r w o a i e r g l c r t h f s o r a e n s i o c r b x g r z b h o w l t s
| Number of letters counted | 85 | 88 |
| Pulse-rate | 72 | 81 |
The experimental data now to be considered were obtained as follows. Record-sheets of the form reproduced above were printed, with blanks for age and name of subject, place, date, for sixteen judgments of time-intervals (numerals 1 to 16), for a statement of the subject's method of estimating time, for the number of letters counted in thirty seconds, and for the pulse-rate. Four intervals were used, 18, 36, 72, and 108 seconds, and for each of these intervals judgments were taken under the four conditions designated on the record-sheet as idleness, reading, writing, and estimating. In the experiments the intervals were not given in order of regular increase or decrease of the length of interval, nor were all the judgments for any one interval taken together, but instead, for the purpose of avoiding the influence of expectation of a particular interval or filling, they were arranged irregularly in the order of column two of the record-sheet. This column, as also columns three and four, which are specimen series of judgments for a male and a female respectively, of course were not printed on the record-sheets which were supplied to the subjects.
The experimental procedure was as follows:
(1) Each subject was given a record-sheet.
(2) The experimenter was provided with a record-sheet on which the time of the intervals numbered from 1 to 16 was given. Care was taken that the subjects should not know the length of the intervals before the experiments.
(3) The beginning of each interval was indicated to the subjects by the word "start" uttered distinctly by the experimenter; the end, by the word "stop."
(4) Before beginning the sixteen tests the experimenter gave a thirty-second interval as a standard of judgment. The experiment then proceeded with only sufficient pause between judgments to allow of the recording of estimates by the subjects.
(5) During the filling called "idleness" the subject did not pay special attention to the estimation of the time, but instead permitted his attention to wander.
(6) During "reading" the experimenter read aloud to the subjects.
(7) During "writing" the subjects wrote from the dictation of the experimenter.
(8) During "estimating" the subjects judged the interval as accurately as they could, by whatever method they chose except the use of a time-piece.
(9) Each subject recorded his judgment of the length of an interval in seconds at the appropriate place on the record-sheet as soon as the interval was ended.
(10) The question following judgment number 16 on the sheet was answered as soon as the sixteen judgments had been recorded.
(11) The number of letters counted in thirty seconds was determined by the use of the lines of letters at the bottom of the sheet. The subjects began at the left of each line and counted singly as many letters as they could between the "start" and "stop" signals of the experimenter. They then marked the last letter counted and immediately recorded, in the place provided on the record-sheet, the number of letters counted.
(12) The pulse was counted by the experimenter immediately after the experiment when possible and the rate recorded on the sheet.
(13) The experimenter avoided delays, interruptions, or other irregularities in the course of the series of experiments.
The materials for our discussion of the sex-differences in time-estimation consist of the judgments of 251 males and 274 females. The majority of the males were students in Harvard College, the majority of the females, in Radcliffe and Smith Colleges. The remainder of the records were obtained in Ohio State University, Pomona College, and West Chester State Normal School. The authors gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness for assistance in the obtaining of records to Professors A. H. Pierce, T. H. Haines, W. H. Scott, D. R. Major, A. M. Smith, H. A. Miller, and B. T. Baldwin. The males ranged in age from 17 to 23 years, the females from 17 to 20. The total number of judgments, the distribution of which among the various ages is shown in Table 1, is 4014 for the males, 4375 for the females.
Despite the fact that our experiments are open to the criticisms of all work done under variable conditions and by different experimenters, it cannot be doubted that the results indicate certain sex-differences in time-estimation which suggest additional problems. For the present we refrain from interpretations for the most part and state merely the statistical results of the investigation.
Previous studies of the "time-sense" and the conditions which influence time-estimation suggested to us the desirability of examining our data with reference to (1) sex-differences in estimates of intervals, (2) age-differences, (3) the influence of different fillings, and (4) differences dependent upon the length of the interval. The results have been studied, therefore, with reference to the significance of sex, age, filling, and length of interval, but as no marked age-differences appeared, the detailed tables which were constructed to exhibit the results for the subjects of each year of age have not been printed.
In all the tables the results for males and females are presented separately. The judgments for the sixteen intervals are arranged with reference to the length of the interval, not in the order in which they were taken; all the 18สนสน intervals, for example, are grouped (Table 2). The letters I, E, R, W, refer to the fillings of the intervals.