Timing and Ageing

Abstract

At the other end of the developmental spectrum, post-young adult development, there has been considerable interest in the possibility of significant changes in time perception and time experience as people age. Why should any sort of changes be expected? One characteristic of normal ageing, the slowing of information processing, might be expected to affect performance on timing tasks. More specifically, slowing metabolism with age may produce a “slowing down” of the pacemaker of the internal clock, which as we have seen has been a popular underlying theoretical principle for explaining human timing. In addition, increasing age brings with it changes in memory, attention, and other cognitive processes; thus older people have lower attentional and memory capacity and poorer control of their executive functions than younger individuals (Hedden & Gabrieli, 2004). These changes in cognitive function with age naturally are linked to changes in the brain (Reuter-Lorenz & Lustig, 2005). All these considerations suggest that changes in performance on timing tasks might well be expected as people age.