(NewsNation) —  The expression “time stood still” may contain some truth when it comes to images we deem memorable. A new study says looking at memorable images appears to slow our sense of time.

And that may help AI developers come up with apps that can sense time on a human level, leading them to interact with us the same way we interact with each other.

The study had college students look at different images for varying, but very short, amounts of time — one-third of a second to nearly one full second. The objects varied in size and “clutter” — a full pantry vs. an empty warehouse, for example.

The students said it felt like they were looking at the smaller, cluttered scenes for a shorter time than the actual duration. And when looking at the larger, sparse scenes, the students said their viewing time was longer than it really was.

In a parallel experiment, subjects looked at images that had been rated for memorability. Not only did they believe they looked at the more memorable images longer than reality, they remembered the images more precisely.

That led to the conclusion that people process more memorable images faster, and how fast it’s processed is linked to how long the memory of that image lasts.

“The results of the experiments outlined here provide evidence for a link between the perception of time and the semantic features of scenes. We observe that scene size and memorability dilate (widen) time, whereas clutter contracts it,” according to the study, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.