Time Flies When We Intend to Act: Temporal Distortion in a Go/No-Go Task

Abstract

Although many of our actions are triggered by sensory events, almost nothing is known about our perception of the timing of those sensory events. Here we show that, when people react to a sudden visual stimulus that triggers an action, that stimulus is perceived to occur later than an identical stimulus that does not trigger an action. In our experiments, participants fixated the center of a clock face with a rotating second hand. When the clock changed color, they were required to make a motor response and then to report the position of the second hand at the moment the clock changed color. In Experiment 1, in which participants made a target-directed saccade, the color change was perceived to occur 59 ms later than when they maintained fixation. In Experiment 2, in which we used a go/no-go paradigm, this temporal distortion was observed even when participants were required to cancel a prepared saccade. Finally, in Experiment 3, the same distortion in perceived time was observed for both go and no-go trials in a manual task in which no eye movements were required. These results suggest that, when a visual stimulus triggers an action, it is perceived to occur significantly later than an identical stimulus unrelated to action. Moreover, this temporal distortion appears to be related not to the execution of the action (or its effect) but rather to the programming of the action. In short, there seems to be a temporal binding between a triggering event and the triggered action.

Eyes that bind us: Gaze leading induces an implicit sense of agency

“…this effect, if present, would work in opposition to our predicted and demonstrated effects). However, two studies have noted an opposing compressive effect (Morrone, Ross & Burr, 2005;Yabe & Goodale, 2015). These opposing effects are small and of similar magnitude so would cancel each other out were they to be present in our (rather different) task, so are unlikely to account for our data.…”

“…It is interesting to note that most temporal binding studies do not investigate whether a non-agentic manual action might produce distorted temporal judgements in and of themselves. However, because we know that saccades do produce some temporal distortion (Morrone et al, 2005;Yabe & Goodale, 2015), our approach affords an opportunity to explore this fundamental question. However, we also note here that, as our primary interest is in social cognition and agency, we look forward to further work being conducted on this question as it relates to core mechanisms of saccade control and temporal distortions because our single experiment may only provide indicative evidence one way or another.…”

How the motor system both encodes and influences our sense of time

“…B. Visual events are perceived later when they trigger actions [35]. C. Vibrotactile and visual filled intervals dilate when they overlap action [49].…”

Intentional binding of visual effects

“…A few previous studies modified the so-called clock paradigm to allow for presentation of visual instead of auditory stimuli during clock presentation (e.g., Bratzke, Bryce, & Seifried-Dübon, 2014;Carlson, Hogendoorn, & Verstraten, 2006;Yabe & Goodale, 2015). Yet, these studies did not investigate IB but rather dual tasking, visual attention, or reactions to stimuli.…”