The results point to mental maps built from prior knowledge rather than on-the-spot sensory signals. Passengers’ estimates followed predictable patterns and a surprising midpoint bias tied to the whole trip, not short segments of the journey. Emotional state and the subjective speed of time had little influence, while knowledge of the route mattered more. Some judgments, like instantaneous speed and duration, were metacognitively reliable; others, like average speed and distance, were not.
For anyone interested in human potential, this work suggests our brains organize travel experience with cognitive rules that favor prior information over moment-to-moment sensation. That tendency affects how people plan, learn, and feel control during transit and carries implications for designers of transport, apps, and inclusive services that rely on travelers’ perceptions. Follow the link to see how these laboratory questions play out on the rails and what they reveal about the mental maps we use every day.
Abstract
Our study investigates how high-speed transport affects humans’ perception of time, space, and speed. We tested 247 passengers traveling on the French Paris-Lyon high-speed train (TGV) who estimated the traveled distance, elapsed duration, and instantaneous and average speeds, while rating their confidence, felt speed of time passage, and emotional state. Environmental variables in this In Situ design included seating orientation (forward or backward) and train acceleration (positive, null [constant high-speed], or negative [deceleration]). Our findings show that participants’ magnitude (duration, distance) estimations scaled with magnitudes. Estimations also exhibited typical features such as central tendency, which interestingly scaled to the midpoint of the journey (∼69 min) rather than the expected ∼15 min. Surprisingly, we found no influence of emotions or felt speed of time passage on magnitude and speed estimates. Instead, participants’ prior knowledge of the journey’s total duration and distance better explained their magnitude estimations than their on-the-fly speed estimates. Seating orientation did not significantly affect estimations, whereas acceleration partly did. Participants demonstrated reliable metacognitive ratings of their duration and instantaneous speed estimates, but not of their distance and average speed estimates. Altogether, our results show that in passive high-speed transport, passengers may rely on cognitive heuristics (mental maps) rather than sensorimotor integration (path integration) to estimate magnitudes. We discuss the implications of our work for understanding mental representations of magnitudes and speed in real-life situations.
