Temporal error monitoring: Does agency matter?

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human Performance

Background:

• Error monitoring, the capacity to detect and report errors without external feedback, is crucial for adaptive behavior.
• While often studied in choice tasks, recent research indicates humans can track magnitudes and directions of temporal, spatial, and numerical judgment errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if temporal error monitoring relies on internal generative processes underlying timing performance.
• To test the hypothesis that temporal error monitoring is linked to endogenous processes, affecting performance in emitted versus observed timing behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Six experiments were conducted to assess temporal error monitoring.
• Methods included confidence ratings, error directionality judgments, and manipulation of perceived agency (self vs. other).
• Control for motor aspects of first-order timing performance was implemented.

Main Results:

• Confidence ratings correlated negatively with error magnitude in self-performed (emitted) tasks, but not in observed tasks.
• Error directionality judgments were more precise for observed behaviors.
• Belief of agency critically influenced confidence ratings; non-agency conditions yielded more precise error directionality judgments.

Conclusions:

• Confidence in temporal judgments is modulated by subjective belief in agency.
• Objective accuracy of temporal error detection (short-long judgment) is influenced by the actual agency of the behavior.
• Internal generative processes play a role in temporal error monitoring, particularly concerning subjective confidence.