Home » Science and Research Articles » Does Time Slow Down In A Crisis? New Evidence Says Yes!
Does Time Slow Down In A Crisis? New Evidence Says Yes!
After much media hoopla, the Baylor College of Medicine report by David M. Eagleman, PhD - that showed that perceptions of time slowing down during accidents are merely products of enriched memory, has been disproved.
/Science and Research PR News/ - February 11, 2008 - Dateline Yellow Springs, Ohio: Many people have reported that time seemed to slow down for them as they were thrown into a crisis situation. Car accidents seem to especially provoke such experiences. Last December, the reality of such situations was cast into doubt when David M. Eagleman, PhD of the Baylor College of Medicine published a paper that suggested time slowing down during frightening events was caused by enriched memory making the event seem longer and thus slow motion. His paper, Does Time Really Slow Down During A Frightening Event? was the product of his conducting an experiment where people were dropped 150 ft. into a net while trying to watch flashing numbers on a wrist monitor. The numbers were set at a rate that was too fast for them to be seen. Eagleman's theory was that if time slowed down for his volunteers, during this frightening fall, the numbers would suddenly be readable. After each fall was completed, the volunteer would estimate the length of time the fall had taken. What Eagleman discovered was that the volunteers not only failed to read the numbers but that they estimated that they had fallen 36% longer, on average, than they had. This would seem to prove that time doesn't slow down for people in a crisis event, but they just think it does afterwards, due to elongated memory.
The paper made the media reports around the world, with Eagleman quoted as saying that people aren't like Neo from the movie, The Matrix. However, many people were put off with the results. More than a few specifically insisted that their perceptions of time slowing down are what enabled them to avoid getting injured, sometimes seriously. If it was just a perception of time afterward, then how could they have emerged from their crisis unscathed?
Now these people have a report of their own that they can point to. Marshall Barnes, a research and development engineer with a background in consciousness research that includes developing a new scientific area he calls technocogninetics, says that the Eagleman study is so flawed that it is completely inconsequential. In other words, it's meaningless. Pretty strong claim to make against an award winning scientist like Eagleman, whose work is being promoted by Baylor College of Medicine. The most shocking thing about Marshall's charges is that he has the evidence to back them up, and in the two most critical cases - reading the flashing numbers and the over estimation of the duration of the falls, he has his proof on video tape - with Eagleman in it.
Marshall's article is online as a digital document that includes links to videos and even an online computer game, to illustrate or present evidence of his various points. Although he has many disagreements with the way in which Eagleman conducted his research, Marshall is able to destroy the credibility of the report with two particular videos and a link to a web site. The first video shows Eagleman and an assistant discussing how the fall estimations should be determined from the moment the volunteers feel themselves being dropped and ending at the time they hit the net.
Then Marshall has you visit the web site of the facility that was used by Eagleman for his experiment. The whole falling into the net affair is done with a towering contraption called a SCAD or Suspended Catch Air Device. It turns out that the SCAD is designed so you can't tell when you hit the net. The web site of the SCAD location says this! That means the SCAD is what causes the volunteers to think they fell longer than they had, not elongated memory. Marshall points out that technocogninetics involves the effect of devices on human consciousness, something that would seem critical in considering doing an experiment concerning an effect on mental perception. So, approaching such an experiment from a technocogninetic framework would require understanding not only the effect of the fall on the volunteers but the effect of the net catching them. Researching that for his article is how he discovered that the SCAD, by its inherent design, would render that portion of Eagleman's test, null and void.
The second video is of a volunteer who did the SCAD drop while the BBC was there. Eagleman tells the BBC that the perception of the numbers can't be faked and so it will be proof that time doesn't slow down. However, when the volunteer tells what numbers he saw after he does his drop, he gets the first number right and the second number close - so close that Eagleman admits on camera the results suggest that time did slow down for that volunteer.
Marshall also found an online article by the BBC about that same event and it turns out that this volunteer, a man by the name of Jesse Kallus, was able to repeatedly read the first number accurately and the second one close. By close, it is meant that the number that Jesse saw looked similar to the actual number - like 8 and 0, which on a digital, block number style monitor, look similar. Marshall holds this out as proof that Eagleman is wrong, further suggesting that Eagleman in fact doesn't understand the phenomena that he's testing for and has ignored the anecdotal evidence that Eagleman claims he's based his experiment on. If he had, Eagleman would have realized that time slowing doesn't happen for everyone and it doesn't happen all of the time for those who have seen it happen. What Marshall says Eagleman should have done was select a control group that had never experienced it, then have other groups who had, from a variety of things like accidents, military experiences and even from video games. Then break those down to those who had experiences just once or twice and those who had them a number of times. At that point, Marshall suggests that Eagleman could have had an accurate test. The assessment is that Eagleman's experiment was sloppy and handled the subject matter in a short shrift fashion, leaving many unanswered questions. There is much potential for this research, especially as Marshall states, military potential, noting that the Army Research Laboratory partially funded the study. With Eagleman's results, there's nothing left to pursue militarily, but with Marshall's findings, that whole picture changes now.
Marshall's article, Duration Dilation and the Flawed Frightening Experiment, is a long and highly detailed work, that includes a fairly thorough review of the subject of time slowing perceptions and how Marshall feels that they operate. Unlike Eagleman, he's not a neurobiologist, but his experience with consciousness and technology has enabled him to see clearly past what he calls Eagleman's "train wreck" and reveal important insights into this common mystery of the human mind. You can read both reports by doing online searches for their titles.
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