How Long are Real-Life Events?

Research in event cognition has focused on how people perceive and remember events under experimental conditions. This research study aims to explore the temporal duration of self-reported events from daily life (Sreekumar, et al., 2018; Zhuang, et al., 2012). The small amount of prior work that exists suggests that daily event durations have a Gaussian distribution and that people have prior beliefs that reflect this reality (Griffiths & Tenenbaum, 2006). Forty-eight participants provided activity duration data as they went about their everyday lives for 14 days. Descriptive analyses and activity duration modeling (mixture models of gaussian, gamma, normal and exponential distributions) were used to characterize event durations within activity types. Results show that most of the events present an exponential pattern of durations, while others show a bimodal pattern. Although some preplanned events have a characteristic time, many daily events have a substantial exponential component.