Self-associated stimuli produce stronger intentional binding.

Abstract

Self-generated actions are important for survival; they influence perception, especially the subjective time between the action and its outcome, known as intentional binding (IB). Whereas most studies on IB have examined the role of action being associated with the self or not, the role of the outcome being associated with the self or not has received less attention. The major models or mechanisms proposed to explain IB do not explicitly discuss the role of self-association without confounding it with intentionality, causality, and prediction. In this study for the 1st time, we used the self-related processing paradigm to investigate the importance of self-association in IB and the potential importance of postdictive mechanisms in self-associated IB. We used a shape-label matching task to associate different identities like self, friend, and stranger with different geometrical shapes like circle, square, and triangle. After the shape-label matching task, participants performed an IB task, in which they estimated the perceived magnitude of the duration between the action and the ensuing outcome. All the outcomes in this task were unpredictable and were not causally related to any particular action. Results revealed that participants reported the perceived interval between their action and the self-associated outcome to be shorter (i.e., stronger IB) compared to a friend- or stranger-associated outcome, demonstrating that mere labeling of a neutral geometrical shape with self leads to stronger IB. The results point to a potentially important role of postdictive mechanisms in IB and agency associated with self-related processing, which is independent of causality and prediction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).