Abstract
Temporal experience and judgment require distinctions among processing history, represented temporal extent, and query-specific information use. This article proposes a systems methodology that separates modeled dynamics, registration, functional access, represented content, and observable responses while distinguishing clock observation, duration calibration, and scheduled action. Three inferential levels are kept distinct: conceptual object typing (Level 1); prospective admissibility rules based on information lineage, query referent, constrained transformation, and boundary lineage (Level 2); and registered empirical implementations (Level 3). Test A separates D1a, support for a positive represented-extent reconstruction pattern, from D1b, incremental predictive utility over same-information unrestricted and matched alternatives. Practical-null, directional, opposite-sign, and indeterminate regions are predeclared. Test B independently evaluates measurement preservation and interface sufficiency across enlarged analytical boundaries. The framework specifies prospective reusability as a criterion to be tested, not as an established result.
In plain language
“Time felt slow,” “I think that lasted five minutes,” “that memory contains years of events,” and “I knew when to act” are all temporal statements, but they are not necessarily reports about the same internal object. They can depend on different records, different information sources, and different questions.
The paper treats those outputs separately and asks researchers to declare, before looking at the result, what information a measure can legitimately use, what its query actually refers to, and how that information remains comparable when the analytical boundary is enlarged to include things such as clocks, reminders, or other people.
Why it matters
Studies of subjective time can become difficult to interpret when several different temporal functions are treated as interchangeable. A participant may experience an interval as slow while it unfolds, later remember it as brief, represent a large narrative extent inside it, and still act accurately from a clock. None of those observations automatically explains the others.
The framework is designed to keep the inferential chain visible. It separates the object being modeled from the information used to answer a particular temporal query, and then separates both from the observable response. That makes it harder to turn a correlation among temporal reports into an unsupported claim that they share one underlying representation.
The broader significance is methodological. If the same discipline can be specified prospectively and reused across tasks, it offers a way to compare temporal judgments without silently changing what a measurement means as new information sources or larger system boundaries are introduced.
Publication record
The manuscript is being prepared for submission. No public preprint has yet been posted. A repository record or final journal DOI will be linked here when available.