Influence of arousal on intentional binding: Impaired action binding, intact outcome binding

Anna Render,Petra Jansen

doi:10.3758/s13414-020-02105-z

Abstract

Emotional states have been indicated to affect intentional binding, resulting in an increase or decrease as a function of valence and arousal. Sexual arousal is a complex emotional state proven to impair attentional and perceptual processes, and is therefore highly relevant to feeling in control over one’s actions. We suggest that sexual arousal affects intentional binding in the same way as highly negative arousing states such as fear and anger. Ninety participants performed the intentional binding task before and after watching an either sexually arousing or emotionally neutral film clip. Analyses were conducted for the subcomponents action and outcome binding separately including the change in arousal before and after the emotion induction as a continuous measure. Results showed an interactive effect for time of measurement (before and after emotion induction) and arousal change on action binding: a decrease in action binding was noted in participants who reported to be more aroused and an increase in action binding was observed for participants who reported to be less aroused. Results emphasize that alterations in action binding are likely to reflect the deficits in the dopaminergic system involved in action execution. An impaired feeling of control in aroused states may play a crucial role for the underlying psychological mechanisms of impulsive violent behavior.

Highlights

Intentional bindingThe awareness of control over one’s own actions and naming the cause of action is referred to as the sense of agency (Gallagher, 2000)
No significant effects have been found for sexual arousal but the current experiment supports the hypothesis that generally arousing states might be associated with a reduction in action binding measured with the Libet clock task
Our study examines effects for arousing states whilst performing an action on both action and outcome binding separately for the first time

Summary

Introduction

The awareness of control over one’s own actions and naming the cause of action is referred to as the sense of agency (Gallagher, 2000). Intentional binding defines a time shift in the perception between a voluntary executed action and a following sensory event. If an action feels controlled, a binding effect between action and event can be observed: the interval is perceived as shorter than it really. Intentional binding can be measured with two different tasks, the Libet clock and the interval estimation ( interval reproduction) task. While time estimations for actions and outcomes in the Libet clock task are made in reference to the hand of an analogue clock (rotating faster than a usual clock), the interval-estimation task works without such a visual reference. Time estimations are a reproduction of the subjective length of a previously experienced event (e.g., Dewey & Knoblich, 2014)

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