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Agency Attribution and Temporal Binding. Towards a New Model of Time Perception

Sense of agency is a concept which represents our ability to attribute actions to ourselves or other people. Studies found that when we perform selfgenerated actions and when we observe other people doing the same, a phenomenon known as temporal binding occurs. It consists of a perception of “temporal attraction” between actions and outcomes [5,8]. Some studies proved that agency and temporal binding rely on multiple top-down and bottom-up mechanisms, such as inferential and sensorimotor processes [18]. However, not many researches considered the impact of experimental factors. For this reason, the present study will focus on this aspect, particularly on the role of the interface and the measure of agency, in order to shed more light on the mechanisms underlying agency attribution and temporal binding. From one side, we found no significant difference in temporal binding in screen and virtual reality conditions, although virtual reality seemed to increase the accuracy of time perception. From the other side, we found that the range of intervals significantly influenced people’s estimations, and errors linearly diverged from one specific interval which was estimated with the most accuracy. Our hypothesis is that people use contextual cues and their knowledge of the world to find an optimal interval between actions and outcomes in different circumstances. This not only questions what we know about agency and temporal binding, but it can be also the foundation of a new model of time perception, where long-term memory and context play a fundamental role.