Two modes
- Stop at the target: pick 5, 10, 15, 30 or 60 seconds, count in your head and stop. You see the real elapsed time and your error to the millisecond. Anything within 5% of the target shows in green.
- Guess the duration: a light stays on for a random 2 to 12 seconds. Type how long you think it was and compare with the real time.
How do people judge time?
There is no single clock organ in the body. The brain pieces together several signals to estimate how much time has passed. Research on time perception has found that estimation errors tend to grow roughly in proportion to the length of the interval. Being off by a few seconds on 60 seconds is normal in a way it would not be on 2 seconds, which is why this test reports your error as a percentage as well as in seconds.
Time also feels different when you are focused, tense, bored or having fun, so the same person can score differently from one day to the next.
Getting more accurate
- Count with words that take about a second each, like "one Mississippi, two Mississippi", to keep a steady beat.
- Keep your breathing even and in rhythm.
- After a few tries you will see whether you run fast or slow, and you can correct for it.