Persontime

Persontime is a concept used to describe the subjective experience of time from an individual’s perspective. It encompasses both the perceived duration of events and the broader sense of the passage of time, which can diverge from objective clock time. The idea sits at the intersection of psychology and philosophy, drawing on research into time perception, attention, memory, and emotion. In this view, persontime is shaped by cognitive processes and emotional states rather than by external chronometry alone.

Measurement of persontime relies on indirect methods. Researchers use duration estimation tasks, temporal reproduction and bisection tasks, experience sampling, and retrospective judgments to gauge how people experience time in different contexts. Neurocognitive studies link persontime to brain networks involved in attention and memory, including frontoparietal circuits and, in some respects, the default mode network, reflecting the role of internal processing in shaping temporal experience.

Variability in persontime is common. Salient, novel, or emotionally charged events can lengthen retrospective time estimates, while routine or monotonous activity can compress perceived duration. Factors such as attentional load, arousal, mood, aging, and cognitive disorders can alter how time feels in daily life.

Relation to other concepts is a key aspect of persontime. It overlaps with “subjective time,” “psychological time,” and “time experience,” but emphasizes the lived tempo rather than objective measurements. In practice, persontime is discussed in contexts ranging from user experience and design to aging and mental health, where recognizing individual temporal experience helps explain differences in how people interact with time.