Ashton Highlights Newsletter 26
Friday 1st May 2015
Dear Readers Time is flying by at an alarming rate. It only feels like 2 minutes since I was saying welcome back to April and it’s already May. A long weekend stretches ahead of us, and whilst for some students it will mean a time of relaxation, for our year 11 and 13’s, it will mean a chance to get ahead with some revision. Our feelings about time are captured in common sayings how time flies when you're having fun, or how it drags when you're bored. Associations between this feeling of time passing and enjoyment run so deep that researchers in the United States were able to make people feel that they were having fun, just by simulating the experience of time flying. By a surreptitious switching of stopwatches, the study at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota was able to make those taking part in the experiment believe that a task had lasted 10 minutes, while in reality it lasted either five or 20. "In controlled circumstances we could manipulate people's feelings of time quite easily," says Professor Aaron Sackett, who led the research. They found that people who were made to believe time had flown reported enjoying the task more, and those who believed time had dragged reported the opposite. The study shows just how important the feeling of time passing at different speeds is in our evaluation of how much we enjoy life. I hope however fast the time passes this weekend, it is enjoyable for you all! Best Wishes Sharon Asquith
Follow us on twitter @ashtoncsc