Intentional agents desire specific outcomes and perform actions to obtain those outcomes. However, whether getting such desired (intended) outcomes change our subjective experience of the duration of that outcome is unknown. Using a temporal bisection task, we investigated the changes in temporal perception of the outcome as a function of whether it was intended or not. Before each trial, participants intended to see one of two possible outcomes but received the intended outcome only in half of the trials. Results showed that intended outcomes were perceived as longer than unintended outcomes. Interestingly, this temporal expansion was present only when the intended outcome appeared after short action-outcome delays (250 ms-Exp 1 and 500 ms-Exp 2), but not when it appeared after long action-outcome delay (1000 ms-Exp 3). The effect was absent when participants did not intend and performed instruction-based action (Exp 4). Finally, Exp 5 (verbal estimation task) revealed that intention induced temporal expansion occurs via altering the gating or switch mechanism and not the pacemaker speed. Results are explained based on intention-induced pre-activation resulting in extended temporal experience. Our study not only suggests inclusion of intention as a potential factor influencing time perception but also indicates a close link between intentional binding and the intention induced temporal expansion of its outcome.

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.

Attention mediates the effect of context-relevant social meaning on prospective duration judgments Srinivasan, N.; Tewari, S.; Makwana, M.; Hopkins, Nicholas

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