Mine is Earlier than Yours: Causal Beliefs Influence the Perceived Time of Action Effects

Abstract

When a key press causes a stimulus, the key press is perceived later and the stimulus earlier than key presses and stimuli presented independently. This bias in time perception has been linked to the intention to produce the effect and thus been called intentional binding (IB). In recent studies it has been shown that the IB effect is stronger when participants believed that they caused the effect stimulus compared to when they believed that another person caused the effect (Desantis et al., 2011). In this experiment we ask whether causal beliefs influence the perceived time of an effect when the putative effect occurs temporally close to another stimulus that is also an effect. In our study two participants performed the same task on connected computers with separate screens. Each trial started synchronously on both computers. When a participant pressed a key, a red and a yellow stimulus appeared as action effects simultaneously or with a slight delay of up to 50 ms. The participants’ task was to judge the temporal order of these two effect stimuli. Participants were either told that one participant caused one of the two stimuli while the other participant seated at the other computer caused the other stimulus, or each participant was told that he/she caused both stimuli. The different causal beliefs changed the perceived time of the effects’ appearance relative to each other. When participants believed they each caused one effect, their “own” effect was perceived earlier than the other participant’s effect. When the participants believed each caused both effects, no difference in the perceived temporal order of the red and yellow effect was found. These results confirm that higher order causal beliefs change the perceived time of an action effect even in a setting in which the occurrence of the putative effect can be directly compared to a reference stimulus.

The sense of agency is action–effect causality perception based on cross-modal grouping

“…The third candidate signal relates to prior thought (magenta component in figure 4). Previous studies [9][10][11]38,39] have advocated several principles, such as priority, rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org Proc R Soc B 280: 20130991 consistency and exclusivity as those probably govern the inference of causality between prior thoughts and action/effect. In particular, the principle of exclusivity is compatible with the one-to-one mapping rule observed in experiment 4.…”

Do Implicit and Explicit Measures of the Sense of Agency Measure the Same Thing?

“…Despite deep controversy over the underlying mechanisms, temporal binding has been used as a proxy for the SoA in several studies [4] , [27] , [28] . The link between temporal binding and SoA is bolstered by findings that prior agency beliefs influence the strength of the binding effect [7] , [29] . Furthermore, certain experimental manipulations which modulate the SoA, such as the congruency of action-effects and the valence of outcomes, may also modulate temporal binding [30] , [31] , [32] , [33] ; but see also Desantis et al [34] , who reported that the mere presence of an action was sufficient to induce temporal binding irrespective of the outcome.…”

Egocentric Temporal Order Bias Robust Across Manipulations of Cue Predictability and Sensory Modality

“…Finally, the present study contributes to a larger understanding of how vantage can systematically bias perceptual experience 7,13,15,[40][41][42] . More broadly, we hope that in time, such findings will cue individuals to consider how differences in judgment may arise from two differing vantages of the same situation, as well as how their own beliefs and experiences have been shaped by their unique perspective.…”

“…From lining up a touch and sound so that they feel simultaneous, to temporally binding an action and its delayed effect with causation, our brains are remarkably good at piecing together signals to construct a holistic perception of our world [1][2][3][4][5][6] . However, this temporal integration can oftentimes lead to illusions and misperceptions during narrow temporal intervals [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] .…”