{"id":4993,"date":"2019-11-26T21:35:12","date_gmt":"2019-11-27T02:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=4993"},"modified":"2020-02-07T11:59:02","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:59:02","slug":"the-real-reason-why-freshmen-are-always-early-and-seniors-are-always-late-to-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2019\/11\/26\/the-real-reason-why-freshmen-are-always-early-and-seniors-are-always-late-to-school\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Reason Why Freshmen are Always Early and Seniors are Always Late to School"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The First Day of Freshman Year<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine it is the morning before the first day of your freshman year of high school. You have only visited your new school once before for orientation so the drive there is unfamiliar. After getting dressed and eating your breakfast, you inform your Mom that you need to leave by 7:20am to get to school by 7:50am. As planned, you and your Mom get in the car at 7:20am and drive to school. The drive seems to take forever but somehow you manage to get to school ten minutes earlier than you had originally planned. Embarrassed by how early you are, you ask your Mom if she can wait in the parking lot until it is socially acceptable to arrive at school. She agrees and finds a spot to park. You recline your seat all the way hoping that no one will see you through the car window. While you wait, you wonder why you got to school so early.<\/p>\n

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The First Day of Senior Year<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Fast forward to the morning before the first day of your senior year of high school. Now that you are a senior, you drive yourself to school. The route to school is no longer new and unfamiliar. Sometimes you wonder if you could drive there with your eyes closed. After getting dressed and eating breakfast, you determine that you need to leave by 7:35am to get to school by 7:50am. The drive seems to fly by but somehow you manage to pull in to the parking lot at 7:55 am. With only five minutes to spare instead of ten minutes, you sprint from the parking lot to class. As you slide into your seat just before the bell rings, you wonder why you got to school so late.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One reason that you find yourself waiting in the parking lot on the first day of freshman year and racing to class on the first day of senior year is because of the\u00a0well-travelled road effect<\/a><\/u>.\u00a0The well-travelled road effect makes traveling unfamiliar routes seem longer and traveling familiar routes seem shorter.\u00a0 The drive to school on the first day of your freshman year felt longer because it was unfamiliar while the drive to school on the first day of your senior year felt shorter because it was familiar.\u00a0 This difference in perceived duration is caused by how your attention is allocated (Avni-Babad & Ritov, 2003).<\/p>\n

Driving a familiar route is similar to performing a routine task.\u00a0It is automatic<\/a> and requires minimal attentional resources.\u00a0 In contrast, driving an unfamiliar route is similar to performing a non-routine or novel task.\u00a0 It is not automatic and requires more attentional resources.\u00a0 Anvni-Babad and Ritov (2003) tested how differences in attention affects our perception of time for routine and non-routine tasks.\u00a0 They found that participants were more likely to perceive changes in non-routine tasks than in routine tasks because more attention was needed to complete these unfamiliar tasks.\u00a0 Differences in perceived changes resulted in differences in estimating the duration of the task.\u00a0 More perceived changes caused the participants to overestimate the duration of the task whereas fewer perceived changes caused the participants to underestimate the duration of the task.\u00a0 This means that you probably noticed when you stopped at a traffic light, yielded to another car, changed lanes, or turned onto a different road more often on the drive to school on your first day of freshman year than your first day of senior year.<\/p>\n

The well-travelled road effect not only affects your perception of time during ongoing tasks but also your ability to accurately estimate how long future tasks will take.\u00a0 When predicting how long a task will take, people tend to recall the perceived duration instead of the actual duration of a task (Roy & Christenfeld, 2007).\u00a0 These biases in our memory cause biases in our ability to predict the duration of future tasks.\u00a0 This means that you will likely be early on your second day of freshman year too.\u00a0 Although you remember arriving too early the day before, you also remember the trip lasting longer than it actually did.\u00a0 As a result, you will once again find yourself waiting in the parking lot with your seat reclined hoping that no one will see you through the car window.\u00a0 In order to prevent this from happening, you should base your predictions for future tasks on the actual duration of the task and not your perceived duration of the task.\u00a0 This effect is similar to the\u00a0planning fallacy<\/a><\/u>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

No Escaping the Well-Travelled Road Effect<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

You may be wondering if the well-travelled road effect is still applicable to this scenario given that your mom drove you to school on the first day of your freshman year and you drove yourself to school on your first day of your senior year.\u00a0 The answer is yes! The well-travelled road effect is still applicable even when you are not the one driving the car or completing the routine task.\u00a0 Roy, Christenfeld, and Jones (2013) examined the difference between actors and observers\u2019 ability to estimate the time it took to complete a task.\u00a0The results showed that there was no difference between the actors and observers\u2019 ability to estimate the time it took to complete a task.\u00a0Based on these findings, they conclude that one\u2019s ability to estimate the duration of a task is dependent on factors such as familiarity and memory.\u00a0 How familiar or unfamiliar you are with a task or whether you remember the perceived or actual duration of the task will ultimately determine your ability to correctly estimate the time it took to complete a task.\u00a0 This means that even when you are in the passenger seat of and not behind the wheel you can still fall victim to the well-travelled road effect.<\/p>\n

If you want to avoid being early and having to wait in the parking lot or being late and having to sprint to class just before the bell rings make sure to base your travel time on the actual duration of the drive and not on your perceived duration of the drive.\u00a0 Using a GPS or a different navigation device, even when you know the route by heart, can help you not fall victim to the well-travelled road effect.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Avni-Babad, D., & Ritov, I. (2003). Routine and the perception of time.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology,132<\/em>(4), 543-550. doi:https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1037\/0096-3445.132.4.543<\/p>\n

Roy, M. M., & Christenfeld, N. J. S. (2007). Bias in memory predicts bias in estimation of future task duration.\u00a0Memory & Cognition<\/em>,\u00a035<\/em>(3), 557\u2013564. https:\/\/doi-org.colby.idm.oclc.org\/10.3758\/BF03193294<\/p>\n

Roy, M. M., Mitten, S. T., & Christenfeld, N. J. S. (2008). Correcting memory improves accuracy of predicted task duration.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied<\/em>,\u00a014<\/em>(3), 266\u2013275. https:\/\/doi-org.colby.idm.oclc.org\/10.1037\/1076-898X.14.3.266<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine it is the morning before the first day of your freshman year of high school. You have only visited your new school once before for orientation so the drive there is unfamiliar. After getting dressed and eating your breakfast, you inform your Mom that you need to leave by 7:20am to get to school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9810,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,266316,130416,370833],"tags":[130382,130383,408669,12419],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9810"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4993"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5368,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4993\/revisions\/5368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}