Cue integration as a common mechanism for action and outcome bindings

Abstract

When a voluntary action is followed by a sensory outcome, their timings are perceived to shift toward each other compared to when they were generated independently. Recent studies have tried to explain this temporal binding effect based on the cue integration theory, in which the timing of action and outcome are estimated as a precision-weighted average of their individual estimates, although distinct results were obtained between the binding of action and outcome. This study demonstrates that cue integration underlies both action and outcome bindings, using visual changes as action outcomes. Participants viewed a moving clock presented on a screen to report the onset time of their action or the feature changes of visual objects that were relevant or irrelevant to the clock movement. The results revealed that the precision of outcome timing judgment was different based on the object that underwent a feature change. Moreover, consistent with the theory's prediction, the perceptual shifts of action and outcome timings were larger and smaller, respectively, when the precision of outcome timing judgments was higher. These results suggest that cue integration serves as a common mechanism in action and outcome bindings.