Adolfo Di Crosta

Pasquale La Malva

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GENERAL COMMENTARYpublished: 10 August 2017doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01384Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1384Edited by:Rocco Palumbo,Harvard Medical School,United StatesReviewed by:Chao Hu,University of Toronto, Canada*Correspondence:Adolfo Di Crostaadolfodicrosta@gmail.comSpecialty section:This article was submitted toEmotion Science,a section of the journalFrontiers in PsychologyReceived: 25 July 2017Accepted: 31 July 2017Published: 10 August 2017Citation:Di Crosta A and La Malva P (2017)Commentary: Experience SamplingMethodology reveals similarities in theexperience of passage of time inyoung and elderly adults.Front. Psychol. 8:1384.doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01384Commentary: Experience SamplingMethodology reveals similarities inthe experience of passage of time inyoung and elderly adultsAdolfo Di Crosta* and Pasquale La MalvaDepartment of Psychology, University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, ItalyKeywords: aging, Experience Sampling Methodology, passage of time, timeA commentary onExperience Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the experience of passage of time inyoung and elderly adultsby Droit-Volet, S., and Wearden, J. H. (2015). Acta Psychol. (Amst.). 156, 77–82.doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.01.006Few studies have investigated differences in judgments of passage of time between younger andolder adults, and the results seem contradictory. Generally, people report that time goes fasteras they get older (Lemlich, 1975) which is due to the pressure of perceived time (Janssen et al.,2013). However, Wittmann and Lehnhoff (2005) and Friedman and Janssen (2010) found no cleardifferences of how passage of time perception changes with aging.The article by Droit-Volet and Wearden (2015) investigated this issue by using the ExperienceSampling Methodology (ESM) technique and combining, for the first time, the assessment of thedirect experience of the flow of time in everyday life in both younger and older adults. The studyinvolved 15 younger adults and 14 older adults. Both groups conducted the experiment through the“Experience Sampling Methodology” (ESM) method, which involves submitting a questionnaire toparticipants at different times of the day using a smartphone provided by the experimenters, andasking them questions regarding the passage of time at different periods of the day. Although thismethod has been used in other studies regarding the evaluation of perception of time (Conti, 2001;Larson and von Eye, 2006), and it is frequently used in health psychology (e.g., Schwartz and Stone,1998; Myin-Germeys et al., 2009), the use of it in cognitive psychology is unusual. Participants werealso asked questions about the passage of time over longer periods of time (this week, this month,or this year), if they felt that time passed more quickly now than when they were younger or if theyfelt that time passes more quickly as people get older. The data obtained were analyzed in relation toadditional variables, including: the affective state of the participants (positive vs. negative), the levelof arousal, the relaxation, the difficulty of the activity, and the degree of attention invested in theactivities. Although the passage of time in every-day life was significantly related to affective statesand the degree of attention invested in their activities, the results showed no significant differencebetween the two groups regarding the answers to questions about the passage of time. Interestingly,both groups felt that time passes more quickly as they get older and that time passes faster inthe present than when they were younger. Further investigation and different modalities of datacollection will be needed in the future to determine whether or not more complex factors, such asthe “reference effect,” played a crucial role. In fact, the lack of differences between older and youngeradults may have been influenced by the tendency of individuals to make judgments in relation toa salient comparison group rather than in absolute terms when responding to the self-report andDi Crosta and La Malva Aging and Passage of Timepeer-report questionnaires (e.g., Youyou et al., 2017). Both,younger and older adults may have probably compared,consciously or unconsciously, the passage of the lastday/week/month/year based on their own criteria (i.e., their ownrecent experience of passage of time which varied between thetwo groups).Compared to previous ones, this study emphasizes theinnovative use of the ESMmethod. This method, unlike the paperand pencil questionnaires, offers the possibility of obtainingecologically large data sets infiltrating in the participants’everyday life to determine directly how they perceive the passageof time (Mehl and Conner, 2012). In the article by Droit-Voletand Wearden there is no measure of the direct experience thatparticipants have on the passage of time on specific daily lifeactivities, but rather the general impression of how time seems toflow in everyday life. In future investigations, this interesting dataregarding the impression could be accompanied by an objectiveand real measurement of the time spent in a certain activitycarried out by the participants, to evaluate not only how time haspassed (e.g., slow vs. fast) but also how much time has actuallypassed (e.g., in s, min, h). In particular, the activity carried outby the participant at the time of evaluation could play a verysignificant role not only in terms of the difficulty of the activityitself, or in the degree of attention invested in it, but also interms of its affective value (Carstensen et al., 1999; Innamoratiet al., 2013; Di Domenico et al., 2015, 2016; Zebrowitz et al.,2015). Based on the extensive literature on emotions and aging(for a review see Fairfield et al., 2015b; Mammarella et al., 2016a),affective contents may affect the performance of participants indifferent domains including memory, language, and perception(Fairfield et al., 2015a; Altamura et al., 2016; Mammarella et al.,2016b, 2017; Palumbo et al., 2017a,b). In this regard, the studyof Droit-Volet et al. consider the overall emotional state of theparticipant in general (but this may not be determined by the typeof activity carried out at that time, but by several other factors).This is related to the fact that, as indicated by the authors, itwas not possible to systematically check all the activities carriedout by the participants on a daily basis, because they were toovaried, but perhaps it would have been advisable to control theinherent value in these activities (Carstensen, 2006) asking theparticipants to rate the valence of their activities on a scaleranging from very negative to very positive. This would haveallowed to divide the activities in positive, negative, and neutralto investigate not only the role of the valence in the perceptionof the passage of time but also the interaction between affectivestate and the valence of the activity on experience of passageof time. It is important to remark that in the study of Droit-Volet et al. the authors only measured the affective state ofthe participants and, although the affective state may play animportant role in the perception of passage of time, it is notpossible to exclude its independence from the valence of theactions carried out. It is possible, in fact, that a subject witha certain affective state may report that time goes faster whenperforms positive actions compared to negative ones or viceversa.In summary, the study of Droit-Volet et al. Emphasizesthe innovative use of the ESM method in dealing with issuesof cognitive psychology ecologically by taking into account acontroversial issue regarding the possible change in the age-related perception of time.In future research, it may be interesting to investigate, throughthe use of ecological studies or with more simple and objectiveparadigm, the role played by emotional factors and thereforenot only the general emotional state of the participants but alsothe value of the activities carried out. More objective studiesmay include the use of the Mismatch Negativity paradigm (e.g.,Chen et al., 2010) to investigate differences between younger andolder adults in the perception of time using, for example, neutral,positive, or negative auditory and visual stimuli.AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONSAll authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectualcontribution to the work, and approved it for publication.REFERENCESAltamura, M., Padalino, F. 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Birds ofa feather do flock together: behavior-based personality-assessment methodreveals personality similarity among couples and friends. Psychol. Sci. 28,276–284. doi: 10.1177/0956797616678187Zebrowitz, L. A., Franklin, R. G. Jr., and Palumbo, R. (2015). Ailingvoters advance attractive congressional candidates. Evol. Psychol. 13, 16–28.doi: 10.1177/147470491501300102Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research wasconducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that couldbe construed as a potential conflict of interest.Copyright © 2017 Di Crosta and La Malva. This is an open-access article distributedunder the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use,distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the originalauthor(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journalis cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution orreproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3 August 2017 | Volume 8 | Article 1384

Commentary: Experience Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the experience of passage of time in young and elderly adults

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