Passage B
Our perception of time during short intervals is affected by inner feelings and psychological changes.
Time flies at the beach or ballpark, but the clock seems stuck when we‟re doing monotonous work or
recovering from a painful experience. Is our perception of time over longer periods governed by a similar
16 ?
Calendar time is thought to represent the experience of moving through life, marking off the days,
months, and years at a uniform pace. But this doesn‟t 17 our own perceptions. In fact, by middle age,
most of us sense that the years—which crawled by in our youth—are rushing past at ever increasing speeds.
Clearly the linear view as it applies to our own experience is misleading. With this in mind, researchers have
proposed an alternative, nonlinear method for tracking the apparent 18 of time.
The basic idea of this approach is that an individual judges the length of any given period, especially a
longer period such as a month or a year, by comparing it to his or her total life span. A year is 10% of one‟s
total life if one is 10 years old, but a 20-year-old would experience the same calendar year as only half
19 length of time, a mere 5%. The life percentage of a particular timespan is just as important as actual
clock or calendar time.
People tend to overlook the shrinking of years when they are young because of a preoccupation with
current concerns and future goals. We become more 20 at middle age, when settling into more
mundane lifestyles, and it is then that a change in the perception of time becomes apparent.
【題組】19. (A) his (B) its (C) that (D) a