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Not only in relation to things but the types of things and their effect on your mind. If you like the situation and enjoy it, time appears shorter and we say time flies. But if the situation is trouble some, the time becomes longer as if it is pralysed. Although brain's processing information is quite fast in that case as well, still time would appear much longer.
So in the case of unconducive situation, your processing of information theory by the brain does not fit well with the feeling of time correctly.
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I think you're right, the different experienced rates of time couldn't be all due to processing speed.
That gave me an idea though; I think alot of how we feel about length of time passed could be due to how much information our mind prioritizes and keeps. The feeling of time having passed quicker or slower, would be relative to how much information our brain records on average.
On a daily basis, 99% of the information we receive is dismissed as unimportant and immediately or soon forgotten.
In your case of waiting in the hospital for news of a loved one, our brain is going to be more activate and less complacent than it usually would be, recording more information. The brain would be very active considering things like "How long has it been? How much longer till we get news? What's going to happen if they don't make it?" Also the brain would be dealing with intense non-word feelings, that would lead to a less complacent mind set.
Because the mind was much more active during the experience, more information (even if its actually mundane) that could not as easily be forgotten (at least soon), was recorded. This information was more likely to add to the experience of more time passing because it wasn't routine. Since the mind was very active and not as much could be forgotten, time would seem to have passed slower.
By contrast: During a routine activity like a car ride home, alot of what we experience has been experienced several times before, and it gets mostly forgotten because our brain doesn't mark it as remember-worthy. So if the brain hasn't bothered to remember as much of the details of what happened, (because its 'same-old'), it could lead to a feeling of time having passed quicker. Really time passed at the same rate, but the mind just didn't record on to as much.
This would work for the movie length idea and a child's perception of time. For the movie, if we've seen it before, that information was already recorded the first time we saw it, and so the brain hasn't recorded as much new information the second time around. For a child's perception, they're brain is less likely to tune things out, as their mind is in a stage of constant learning and development.
If our brain functioned at 100% a few moments ago, (it was hyper-alert and took in every detail in its perception, say if you saw somebody holding a gun), time might have seemed to pass in slow motion, because information was recorded that it usually takes a longer period of time to accumulate. Every way that our mind isn't as active as that hyper-alertness in a situation, would make time seem to pass quicker than that extreme situation.
I spose another indication we have for the amount of time passed between two events, is the difference in perceived energy expended. An emergency hospital visit would be much more exhausting mentally than a routine car ride. Even if the event was actually the same length, the exhaustion might make the hospital visit seem longer because the person experiencing it feels fatigued as they usually would if much more time had passed.
It's like if two equal length events happen for you, but one of them had your brain taking in more information than the other. In the lazy event with less brain recording, less information is remembered. In the intense event with more brain recording, more information is remembered. Upon reflection, since you can get more information from the event with more brain recording, it seems like more happened, and therefore more time passed. Also, since you might feel more tired mentally, after more brain recording, you might have the physical feeling of more time having passed.
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This is so because we make a reference of a particular situation and relate our conception of time with that reference only.
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I'm not sure I understand this. If time wasn't actually moving forward, and it was just our perception, I would think we would be able to remember some things in the future and experience time backward, or as you put it, reference a particular situation, but in the future.