Intentional binding effect in children: insights from a new paradigm

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Developmental Psychology
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Intentional binding (IB) measures the temporal attraction between voluntary actions and sensory consequences.
• IB is an implicit measure of sense of agency (SoA) and typically studied in adults.
• Age-related differences in IB development are largely unexplored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the developmental trajectory of intentional binding in 10-year-old children.
• To compare IB effects in children and young adults.
• To explore the maturation of the frontal cortical network in relation to agency.

Main Methods:

• A novel letter-stream paradigm was developed to assess IB, avoiding clock-reading difficulties.
• Experiment I: Young adults were tested to validate the new IB paradigm.
• Experiment II: 10-year-old children were tested using the same paradigm.

Main Results:

• The IB effect was successfully replicated in young adults.
• A significantly reduced IB effect was observed in 10-year-old children.
• Young adults demonstrated a stronger linkage between actions and consequences than children.

Conclusions:

• Intentional binding shows a developmental trend, emerging in childhood and strengthening into adulthood.
• Findings suggest maturation of the frontal cortical network underlies the development of agency.
• This study provides novel insights into the developmental neuroscience of action-outcome binding.