The Time Course of Intentional Binding for Late Effects

Abstract

Stimuli elicited by one’s own actions (i.e., effects) are perceived as temporally earlier compared to stimuli not elicited by one’s own actions. This phenomenon is referred to as intentional binding (IB), and is commonly used as an implicit measure of sense of agency. Typically, IB is investigated by employing the so-called clock paradigm, in which participants are instructed to press a key (i.e., perform an action), which is followed by a tone (i.e., an effect), while presented with a rotating clock hand. Participants are then asked to estimate the position of the clock hand at tone onset. This time point estimate is compared to a baseline estimate where the tone is presented without any preceding action. In the present study, we investigated IB for effects occurring after relatively long delay durations (500 ms, 650 ms, 800 ms), while manipulating the temporal predictability of the delay duration. We observed an increase of IB for longer delay durations, whereas the temporal predictability did not significantly influence the magnitude of IB. This extends previous findings obtained with the clock paradigm, which have shown an increase of IB for very short delay ranges (<250 ms), but a decrease for intermediate delay ranges up to delay durations of 650 ms. Our findings, thus, indicate rather complex temporal dynamics of IB that might look similar to a wave-shaped function.