Mnemotropism: Persistence Tendency in Remembering

Abstract

MANY hundreds of estimates of given short time intervals incidentally revealed a tendency of successive estimates to approximate each other. For example, in a thousand estimates of ten seconds, varying from 3 to 16.2 seconds, the frequency of differences between successive estimates can be summarised as follows:There appears to be a tendency to repeat compensatory underor over-estimates, for example, 10, 6, 10, 7, 10, 7 seconds; or, 11, 8, 6, 12, 8, 6, 12, 8, 8, 7, 11, 7 seconds.