Intentional binding as Bayesian cue combination: testing predictions with trait individual differences

Intentional binding refers to the subjective compression of the time between an action and its outcome, typically indicated by a forward shift in the judged time of an action toward its outcome (action binding) and the backward shift of an outcome toward the action that caused it (outcome binding). The effect is considered an implicit measure of the sense of agency as it is sensitive to intentional action without requiring explicit reflection upon agency. One way of explaining the sensitivity of intentional binding is to see it as a simple case of multisensory cue combination in which awareness of intentions increases knowledge of the timing of actions. Here we present results consistent with such a mechanism. An experience of involuntariness is central to hypnotic responding, and may arise from strategically being unaware of one’s intentions. Trait differences in the ability to respond to hypnotic suggestion may reflect differing levels of access to motor intentions, with highly hypnotisable people having relatively low access and low hypnotisable people greater access. In a contingent presentation of action and outcome events, low hypnotisables had more precise timing judgements of actions than highs, and showed weaker action binding than highs. These results support the theory that trait hypnotisability is related to access to information related to motor intentions, as increased availability of such information should support more precise judgements of the timing of an intentional action. Intentional binding may thus reflect the Bayesian combination of cross-modal cues.

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‘Intentional binding’ without intentional action

10.31234/osf.io/vaybe ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Keisuke Suzuki ◽

Peter Lush ◽

Anil Seth ◽

Warrick Roseboom

Keyword(s):

Spatial Information ◽

Conscious Experience ◽

Intentional Action ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Fundamental Aspect ◽

Implicit Measure ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Related Information ◽

Temporal And Spatial

The experience of authorship over one’s actions and their consequences - sense of agency - is a fundamental aspect of conscious experience. In recent years, it has become common to use intentional binding as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. However, it remains contentious whether binding effects indicate the role of intention-related information in perception or merely represent a strong case of multisensory causal binding. Here, we use a novel virtual reality setup to demonstrate identical magnitude binding effects both in the presence and complete absence of intentional action, when perceptual stimuli are matched for temporal and spatial information. Our results demonstrate that intentional binding-like effects are most simply accounted for by multisensory causal binding, without necessarily being related to intention or agency. Future studies which relate binding effects to agency must provide evidence for effects beyond that expected for multisensory causal binding by itself.

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Intentional Binding Without Intentional Action

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797619842191 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (6) ◽

pp. 842-853 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Keisuke Suzuki ◽

Peter Lush ◽

Anil K. Seth ◽

Warrick Roseboom

Keyword(s):

Spatial Information ◽

Conscious Experience ◽

Intentional Action ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Fundamental Aspect ◽

Implicit Measure ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Related Information ◽

Temporal And Spatial

The experience of authorship over one’s actions and their consequences—sense of agency—is a fundamental aspect of conscious experience. In recent years, it has become common to use intentional binding as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. However, it remains contentious whether reported intentional-binding effects indicate the role of intention-related information in perception or merely represent a strong case of multisensory causal binding. Here, we used a novel virtual-reality setup to demonstrate identical magnitude-binding effects in both the presence and complete absence of intentional action, when perceptual stimuli were matched for temporal and spatial information. Our results demonstrate that intentional-binding-like effects are most simply accounted for by multisensory causal binding without necessarily being related to intention or agency. Future studies that relate binding effects to agency must provide evidence for effects beyond that expected for multisensory causal binding by itself.

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The Power of Suggestion: Posthypnotically Induced Changes in the Temporal Binding of Intentional Action Outcomes

Psychological Science ◽

10.1177/0956797616687015 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 28 (5) ◽

pp. 661-669 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Peter Lush ◽

Emilie A. Caspar ◽

Axel Cleeremans ◽

Patrick Haggard ◽

Pedro Alexandre Magalhães De Saldanha da Gama ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Intentional Action ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Strategic Action ◽

Temporal Binding ◽

Induced Changes

The sense of agency is the experience of initiating and controlling one’s voluntary actions and their outcomes. Intentional binding (i.e., when voluntary actions and their outcomes are perceived to occur closer together in time than involuntary actions and their outcomes) is increased in intentional action but requires no explicit reflection on agency. The reported experience of involuntariness is central to hypnotic responding, during which strategic action is experienced as involuntary. We report reduced intentional binding in a hypnotically induced experience of involuntariness, providing an objective correlate of reports of involuntariness. We argue that this reduced binding results from the diminished influence of motor intentions in the generation of the sense of agency when beliefs about whether an action is intended are altered. Thus, intentional binding depends on awareness of intentions. This finding shows that changes in metacognition of intentions affect perception.

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Intentional binding as Bayesian cue combination: Testing predictions with trait individual differences.

Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance ◽

10.1037/xhp0000661 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 45 (9) ◽

pp. 1206-1217 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Peter Lush ◽

Warrick Roseboom ◽

Axel Cleeremans ◽

Ryan B. Scott ◽

Anil K. Seth ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Cue Combination ◽

Intentional Binding

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Learning from informative losses boosts the sense of agency

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1177/1747021820958258 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 73 (12) ◽

pp. 2272-2289

Author(s):

Bartosz Majchrowicz ◽

Eugenia Kulakova ◽

Steven Di Costa ◽

Patrick Haggard

Keyword(s):

Learning Task ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Implicit Measure ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Effective Learning ◽

Future Performance ◽

Adaptive Property ◽

Eeg Data ◽

Human Sense

Sense of agency, the feeling of having control over one’s actions, is modulated by whether one’s choices lead to desired or undesired outcomes. Learning similarly depends on outcome values from previous experience. In the current study, we evaluate a possible link between the sense of agency and learning, by investigating how intentional binding, an implicit measure of agency, changes during a probabilistic learning task. In two experiments, we show increased intentional binding in trials that follow losses, compared with trials that follow wins. Experiment 1 demonstrated that this post-error agency boost (PEAB) effect is rule-specific, as it did not occur if the trial following an error involved different action–outcome contingencies. Furthermore, PEAB was not modulated by the type of outcome presentation (monetary vs. affective). Experiment 2 showed that the PEAB effect can also occur when the current action involves a forced (as opposed to free) choice, but only when the previous, loss-provoking action was chosen freely. Thus, PEAB occurs when current actions are informed by outcomes of one’s own previous action choices. Electroencephalography (EEG) data linked these effects to two event-related potential components, namely, the Feedback Related Negativity and the P300. Taken together, these results support the notion that PEAB reflects an adaptive property of human sense of agency, facilitating effective learning about the action–outcome structure of a specific task, to optimise future performance. By clarifying the conditions for enhancing the sense of agency through learning, this work adds to our understanding of human learning and agency.

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Sense of agency for future-directed intentions: Intentional binding for intermediate outcomes

10.31234/osf.io/qa93k ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Saurabh Ranjan ◽

Narayanan Srinivasan

Keyword(s):

Reaction Time ◽

Tracking Control ◽

Response Times ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Implicit Measure ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Intermediate Outcome ◽

Intermediate Outcomes ◽

Main Effect ◽

Initial Action

Intentions can be present-directed or future-directed. Given that previous studies have primarily focused on understanding present-directed intentions, we studied sense of agency (SoA) for future-directed intentions by focusing on intermediate action-outcome events. The intermediate outcome exactly predicted the final perceptual outcome. We hypothesized that if SoA is conceptualized as tracking control, then IB (an implicit measure of SoA) should be present even at intermediate stages i.e. between initial action and appearance of intermediate outcome, which was associated with the intended outcome. In addition, we hypothesized faster response times for those intermediate outcome events that predicted the intended outcome. We also manipulated the contingency between intended outcome and intermediate outcome. We found as hypothesized a main effect of intention on interval judgement and reaction time for the intermediate outcome. Durations were judged shorter (more IB) for the intermediate outcome that predicted the intended outcome. The results support accounts of SoA that emphasize tracking control and the presence of IB for intermediate outcomes can be explained through post-dictive mechanisms.

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Try and try again: Post-error boost of an implicit measure of agency

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology ◽

10.1080/17470218.2017.1350871 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (7) ◽

pp. 1584-1595 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Steven Di Costa ◽

Héloïse Théro ◽

Valérian Chambon ◽

Patrick Haggard

Keyword(s):

Reinforcement Learning ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Action Selection ◽

Quantitative Model ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Implicit Measure ◽

Positive Outcomes ◽

Negative Outcomes ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Reward Probability

The sense of agency refers to the feeling that we control our actions and, through them, effects in the outside world. Reinforcement learning provides an important theoretical framework for understanding why people choose to make particular actions. Few previous studies have considered how reinforcement and learning might influence the subjective experience of agency over actions and outcomes. In two experiments, participants chose between two action alternatives, which differed in reward probability. Occasional reversals of action–reward mapping required participants to monitor outcomes and adjust action selection processing accordingly. We measured shifts in the perceived times of actions and subsequent outcomes (‘intentional binding’) as an implicit proxy for sense of agency. In the first experiment, negative outcomes showed stronger binding towards the preceding action, compared to positive outcomes. Furthermore, negative outcomes were followed by increased binding of actions towards their outcome on the following trial. Experiment 2 replicated this post-error boost in action binding and showed that it only occurred when people could learn from their errors to improve action choices. We modelled the post-error boost using an established quantitative model of reinforcement learning. The post-error boost in action binding correlated positively with participants’ tendency to learn more from negative outcomes than from positive outcomes. Our results suggest a novel relation between sense of agency and reinforcement learning, in which sense of agency is increased when negative outcomes trigger adaptive changes in subsequent action selection processing.

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Altered sense of agency in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome: behavioural, clinical and functional magnetic resonance imaging findings

Brain Communications ◽

10.1093/braincomms/fcaa204 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Laura Zapparoli ◽

Silvia Seghezzi ◽

Francantonio Devoto ◽

Marika Mariano ◽

Giuseppe Banfi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Magnetic Resonance ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Tourette Syndrome ◽

Sense Of Agency ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Intentional Binding ◽

Action Monitoring

Abstract Current neurocognitive models of motor control postulate that accurate action monitoring is crucial for a normal experience of agency—the ability to attribute the authorship of our actions and their consequences to ourselves. Recent studies demonstrated that action monitoring is impaired in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, a movement disorder characterized by motor and vocal tics. It follows that Tourette syndrome patients may suffer from a perturbed sense of agency, the hypothesis tested in this study. To this end, we recruited 25 Tourette syndrome patients and 25 matched healthy controls in a case-control behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging study. As an implicit index of the sense of agency, we measured the intentional binding phenomenon, i.e., the perceived temporal compression between voluntary movements and their external consequences. We found evidence of an impaired sense of agency in Tourette syndrome patients who, as a group, did not show a significant intentional binding. The more reduced was the individual intentional binding, the more severe were the motor symptoms. Specific differences between the two groups were also observed in terms of brain activation patterns. In the healthy controls group, the magnitude of the intentional binding was associated with the activity of a premotor–parietal–cerebellar network. This relationship was not present in the Tourette syndrome group, suggesting an altered activation of the agency brain network for self-generated acts. We conclude that the less accurate action monitoring described in Tourette syndrome also involves the assessment of the consequences of actions in the outside world. We discuss that this may lead to difficulties in distinguishing external consequences produced by their own actions from the ones caused by others in Tourette syndrome patients.

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