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Updated: Jul 9, 2026
08:01
Virtual Hand with Ambiguous Movement between the Self and Other Origin: Sense of Ownership and 'Other-Produced' Agency
Published on: October 28, 2020
Agency, subjective time, and other minds.
Kai Engbert1, Andreas Wohlschläger, Richard Thomas
1Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Müenchen, Germany. kaiengbert@hotmail.com
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance
|December 19, 2007
Summary
Intentional binding, the perceived temporal link between actions and effects, is stronger for self-generated actions. This effect is more pronounced when actions lead to external events rather than bodily sensations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psychology
- Human Perception
Background:
- Intentional binding describes the temporal attraction between perceived action and effect timing.
- Previous research primarily used direct time judgments of actions or effects.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate intentional binding using a novel method: time interval estimation.
- To explore the influence of action generation (self vs. other) and effect type (somatic vs. external) on intentional binding.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted using interval estimation between voluntary actions and subsequent effects.
- Actions were either self-generated or performed by an experimenter.
- Effects involved movements applied to the participant's or experimenter's body, or external events.
Main Results:
- Interval estimation successfully validated as a method for studying action awareness.
- Intentional binding was significantly stronger for self-generated actions compared to observed actions.
- Intentional binding did not differ based on whether the effect was somatic (on self or other).
- For self-generated actions, external events produced stronger intentional binding than somatic effects.
Conclusions:
- Private information about action execution contributes to the sense of agency and intentional binding.
- Intentional binding is particularly sensitive to the link between self-generated actions and their consequences in the external world.
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