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Why can a busy week feel short until you look back?

A busy afternoon can seem to disappear, then feel full of events when you remember it. Judging time as it passes and reconstructing it afterward ask different things of attention and memory. The contrast is a useful starting point for the familiar feeling that a week was both short and long.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • What changes when people know in advance they will be asked to estimate time?
  • How far can a short laboratory experiment explain the feeling of a whole week?

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Can a question change what someone remembers?

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