Intention, attention and the temporal experience of action

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Philosophy of Mind

Background:

• The sense of agency is crucial for understanding our actions and their consequences.
• Previous research suggests agency involves complex temporal judgments and potential binding effects between actions and outcomes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the temporal binding between intentions, actions, and their effects.
• To explore the role of predictability and attention in the sense of agency.
• To examine the underlying mechanisms generating the experience of intentional action.

Main Methods:

• Participants estimated the timing of intentions, actions, and auditory effects.
• A perceptual binding task was employed, manipulating predictability of the event to be judged.
• A control task with auditory tone sequences was used for comparison.
• A study with a deafferented subject (IW) was included.

Main Results:

• A perceptual binding effect was observed between actions and their effects, but not intentions.
• Binding was stronger and fused intention, action, and effect when the judged event was unpredictable.
• Tone sequences did not show binding when predictability was high, but fused when unpredictable.
• Deafferented subject IW showed normal binding, suggesting a role for pre-motor processes.

Conclusions:

• Action-effect binding appears to be an automatic, pre-attentive process.
• The sense of agency is likely generated by a reconstructive process triggered by efferent signals.
• Intentional action experience involves an interplay between pre-motor commands and post-action reconstruction.