A Journey Into a Traveler's Mental Map: Duration, Distance, and Speed Experienced in High-Speed Trains

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Human Factors Engineering
• Transportation Science

Background:

• Understanding human perception of time, space, and speed is crucial, particularly in novel environments like high-speed transport.
• Previous research often relies on controlled laboratory settings, limiting real-world applicability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how high-speed transport influences passengers' perception of time, space, and speed.
• To examine the impact of environmental factors (seating orientation, acceleration) and internal states (emotions, time perception) on these estimations.

Main Methods:

• 247 passengers on the Paris-Lyon high-speed train (TGV) participated in an in-situ study.
• Participants estimated traveled distance, elapsed duration, and speeds, while rating confidence, felt time passage, and emotional state.
• Environmental variables included seating orientation and train acceleration (positive, null, negative).

Main Results:

• Magnitude estimations (duration, distance) scaled with actual magnitudes and showed central tendency around the journey's midpoint.
• Prior knowledge of journey duration/distance better predicted estimations than on-the-fly speed perception.
• Emotions and felt speed of time did not influence estimations; acceleration had a partial effect, seating orientation did not.

Conclusions:

• Passengers in passive high-speed transport may utilize cognitive heuristics (mental maps) over sensorimotor integration (path integration) for magnitude estimations.
• Findings offer insights into mental representations of magnitudes and speed in real-life scenarios.
• Metacognitive reliability varied, being strong for duration/instantaneous speed but weak for distance/average speed.