Intentional binding is unrelated to action intention.

Abstract

The present study examined the role of voluntary motor commands in the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory consequence termed as intentional binding. Participants either pressed a key voluntarily or involuntarily while seeing a rotating clock hand. The key press was followed by a short beep tone in some blocks of trials. Then, the position of the clock hand at action or tone occurrence was judged. Trials in which key presses and tones occurred separately provided baseline measures. A direct comparison of baseline uncorrected estimates between both action conditions indicated less binding for involuntary than for voluntary movements as reported by previous studies. However, this effect disappeared after a baseline correction and when we controlled for the temporal predictability of critical events. These results cast substantial doubts on a close link between action intention and intentional binding, but instead highlight the role of causal inference and multisensory integration processes. Public Significance StatementIn contrast to previous research, this study suggests that the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory effect previously termed as intentional binding is not related to the intentionality of the actor.

Spatial action–effect binding depends on type of action–effect transformation

“…Additionally, there were no differences at all between the ownership ratings for different conditions. These results add to previous studies which showed diverging patterns of results for explicit and implicit measures of agency (such as temporal binding; Buehner, 2012; Kirsch, Kunde, & Herbort, 2019;Majchrowicz & Wierzchoń, 2018;Moore, Lagnado, Deal, & Haggard, 2009;Schwarz, Weller, Klaffehn, & Pfister, 2019;Suzuki, Lush, Seth, & Roseboom, 2019) and extend these findings to the spatial domain and measures of ownership as well.…”

“…However, and especially against this background, the inconsistencies between the implicit binding measure and the explicit ratings are an interesting finding that add up to an increasing number of studies showing that implicit measures of agency and ownership, such as temporal or spatial binding, might be related to explicit sense of agency and ownership to a lesser extent than previously thought (Buehner, 2012 ; Kirsch et al, 2019 ; Majchrowicz & Wierzchoń, 2018 ; Moore et al, 2009 ; Schwarz et al, 2019 ; Suzuki et al, 2019 ). While we cannot rule out possible methodological reasons for our inconsistent findings, disentangling the relationship between explicit agency and ownership experiences and different binding measures further could be an interesting question for future research.…”

Temporal binding past the Libet clock: testing design factors for an auditory timer

“…Beyond the fact that temporal binding is sensitive to intentions and is thus often referred to as intentional binding (e.g., Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009;Moore & Obhi, 2012), it has been shown that temporal binding is also informed by causality, which is why intentions are not a prerequisite for it to arise (Buehner, 2012;Suzuki, Lush, Seth, & Roseboom, 2019). It is a widely employed measure for time estimations in both healthy participants and clinical populations such as patients with schizophrenia or Parkinson's disease (Buehner & Humphreys, 2009;Haggard, Martin, Taylor-Clarke, Jeannerod, & Franck, 2003;Kirsch, Kunde, & Herbort, 2019;Moore et al, 2010). Despite the common use of temporal binding as a measure, as of yet there are not many ways of studying it.…”

Sense of Agency in Multi-Step Actions

“…If causality perception indeed decreases with more action steps, an implicit measure of SoA should also reflect this. In fact, both sensory attenuation and intentional binding have been questioned regarding their ability to adequately capture the SoA, because they have also been observed outside the context of voluntary actions (Kaiser & Schütz-Bosbach, 2018;Kirsch et al, 2019;Suzuki et al, 2019). Thus, in line with some arguments outlined above, the present sensory attenuation effects may be a consequence of better temporal predictability of the tone in the three-step action, rather than reflecting a stronger SoA.…”