Feelings of control: Contingency determines experience of action

The experience of causation is a pervasive product of the human mind. Moreover, the experience of causing an event alters subjective time: actions are perceived as temporally shifted towards their effects [Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5(4), 382-385]. This temporal shift depends partly on advance prediction of the effects of action, and partly on inferential “postdictive” explanations of sensory effects of action. We investigated whether a single factor of statistical contingency could explain both these aspects of causal experience. We studied the time at which people perceived a simple manual action to occur, when statistical contingency indicated a causal relation between action and effect, and when no such relation was indicated. Both predictive and inferential “postdictive” shifts in the time of action depended on strong contingency between action and effect. The experience of agency involves a process of causal learning based on statistical contingency.     

情绪效价可预测性对时间捆绑效应的影响

时间捆绑效应指的是主观上主动动作和动作结果的时间点相互靠近的现象。其中, 时间捆绑效应可分为动作捆绑和结果捆绑, 分别对应主动动作和动作结果的时间点变化。本研究通过一个混合设计实验考察了情绪效价可预测性对时间捆绑效应的影响。情绪效价可预测性(可预测、不可预测)为被试内因素, 刺激模态(听觉刺激、视觉刺激)为被试间因素。结果发现, 情绪效价为可预测时, 结果捆绑在主动按键后产生听觉刺激或视觉刺激都出现了增强, 而动作捆绑仅在产生视觉刺激时才出现增强。结果表明, 情绪效价为可预测时会增强时间捆绑效应, 但该作用在动作捆绑和结果捆绑中存在差异。由于时间捆绑效应是反映主动控制感的主要指标, 本研究结果对先进驾驶辅助系统的交互设计具有一定的参考意义。     

Intentional action: conscious experience and neural prediction

Intentional action involves both a series of neural events in the motor areas of the brain, and also a distinctive conscious experience that "I" am the author of the action. This paper investigates some possible ways in which these neural and phenomenal events may be related. Recent models of motor prediction are relevant to the conscious experience of action as well as to its neural control. Such models depend critically on matching the actual consequences of a movement against its internally predicted effects. However, it remains unclear whether our conscious experience of action depends on a precise matching process, or a retrospective inference that "I" must have been responsible for a particular event. We report an experiment in which normal subjects judged the perceived time of either intentional actions, involuntary movements, or subsequent effects (auditory tones) of these. We found that the subject's intention to produce the auditory tone produced an intentional binding between the perceived times of the subject's action and the tone. However, if the intention was interrupted by an imposed involuntary movement, followed by the identical tone, no such binding occurred. The phenomenology of intentional action requires an appropriate predictive link between intentions and effects, rather than a retrospective inference that "I" caused the effect.     

Action,prediction, and temporal awareness

The brain needs to track changes in the relation between action and effect. In two experiments, participants made voluntary keypress actions. In an adaptation phase, these actions were followed after a fixed interval by a tone. During a subsequent test phase, the duration of the interval was unexpectedly changed. We used time perception as an implicit marker of the experience of participants' control over the effect, and confirmed a temporal binding between actions and effects. On test trials, participants perceived tones to occur as shifted towards their time of occurrence in the preceding adaptation phase. Therefore, the perceived time of a tone was partly based on learning of an internal prediction, rather than on the time of actual sensory input. This predictive model is rapidly updated over a few trials (Experiment 1), and requires attention to the tones (Experiment 2). The brain learns action–effect relations. This predictive learning influences the perception of effects, and underlies some temporal illusions associated with action.     

Predictability affects the perception of audiovisual synchrony in complex sequences

The ability to make accurate audiovisual synchrony judgments is affected by the "complexity" of the stimuli: We are much better at making judgments when matching single beeps or flashes as opposed to video recordings of speech or music. In the present study, we investigated whether the predictability of sequences affects whether participants report that auditory and visual sequences appear to be temporally coincident. When we reduced their ability to predict both the next pitch in the sequence and the temporal pattern, we found that participants were increasingly likely to report that the audiovisual sequences were synchronous. However, when we manipulated pitch and temporal predictability independently, the same effect did not occur. By altering the temporal density (items per second) of the sequences, we further determined that the predictability effect occurred only in temporally dense sequences: If the sequences were slow, participants' responses did not change as a function of predictability. We propose that reduced predictability affects synchrony judgments by reducing the effective pitch and temporal acuity in perception of the sequences.     

The relation between action, predictability and temporal contiguity in temporal binding

Previous studies have documented a subjective temporal attraction between actions and their effects. This finding, named intentional binding, is thought to be the result of a cognitive function that links actions to their consequences. Although several studies have tried to outline the necessary and sufficient conditions for intentional binding, a quantitative comparison between the roles of temporal contiguity, predictability and voluntary action and the evaluation of their interactions is difficult due to the high variability of the temporal binding measurements. In the present study, we used a novel methodology to investigate the properties of intentional binding. Subjects judged whether an auditory stimulus, which could either be triggered by a voluntary finger lift or be presented after a visual temporal marker unrelated to any action, was presented synchronously with a reference stimulus. In three experiments, the predictability, the interval between action and consequence and the presence of action itself were manipulated. The results indicate that (1) action is a necessary condition for temporal binding; (2) a fixed interval between the two events is not sufficient to cause the effect and (3) only in the presence of voluntary action do temporal predictability and contiguity play a significant role in modulating the effect.These findings are discussed in the context of the relationship between intentional binding and temporal expectation.     

Action selection and action awareness

Human actions are often classified as either internally generated, or externally specified in response to environmental cues. These two modes of action selection have distinct neural bases, but few studies investigated how the mode of action selection affects the subjective experience of action. We measured the experience of action using the subjective compression of the interval between actions and their effects, known as ‘temporal binding’. Participants performed either a left or a right key press, either in response to a specific cue, or as they freely chose. Moreover, the time of each keypress could either be explicitly cued to occur in one of two designated time intervals, or participants freely chose in which interval to act. Each action was followed by a specific tone. Participants judged the time of their actions or the time of the tone. Temporal binding was found for both internally generated and for stimulus-based actions. However, the amount of binding depended on whether or not both the choice and the timing of action were selected in the same way. Stronger binding was observed when both action choice and action timing were internally generated or externally specified, compared to conditions where the two parameters were selected by different routes. Our result suggests that temporal action–effect binding depends on how actions are selected. Binding is strongest when actions result from a single mode of selection.

---

Uncovering effects of self-control and stimulus-driven action selection on the sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to feelings of causing one’s own action and resulting effect. Previous research indicates that voluntary action selection is an important factor in shaping the sense of agency. Whereas the volitional nature of the sense of agency is well documented, the present study examined whether agency is modulated when action selection shifts from self-control to a more automatic stimulus-driven process. Seventy-two participants performed an auditory Simon task including congruent and incongruent trials to generate automatic stimulus-driven vs. more self-control driven action, respectively. Responses in the Simon task produced a tone and agency was assessed with the intentional binding task – an implicit measure of agency. Results showed a Simon effect and temporal binding effect. However, temporal binding was independent of congruency. These findings suggest that temporal binding, a window to the sense of agency, emerges for both automatic stimulus-driven actions and self-controlled actions.     

The effects of expectancy on inhibition of return

This research examined the influence of cue temporal predictability on inhibition of return (IOR). In exogenous attention experiments, the cue that summons attention is non-informative as to where the target will appear. However, it is predictive as to when it will appear. Because in most experiments there are equal numbers of trials for each cue-target interval (SOA--stimulus onset asynchrony), as time passes from the appearance of the cue, the probability of target presentation increases. Predictability was manipulated by using three SOA distributions: non-aging, aging and accelerated-aging. A robust IOR was found that was not modulated by temporal information within a trial. These results show that reflexive effects are relatively protected against modulation by higher volitional processes.     

Both motor prediction and conceptual congruency between preview and action-effect contribute to explicit judgment of agency

The sense of agency is the sense that one is causing an action. The inferential account of the sense of agency proposes that we experience the sense of agency when we infer that one’s own thoughts are the cause of an action. According to this account, the inference occurs when a thought appears in consciousness prior to an action, is consistent with the action, and is not accompanied by conspicuous other causes of the action. Alternatively, a predictive account of the sense of agency proposes that sensory prediction based on efferent (motor) information plays a critical role in generating the sense of agency. The present study investigated whether the sense of agency depended primarily on the conceptual congruence between preview information (i.e., to elicit a thought) and actual sensory feedback as suggested by the inferential account, or whether it depended primarily on the sensory-motor congruence between prediction and actual sensory feedback as suggested by the predictive account. The results indicated that both of these factors did contribute to the sense of agency, although sensory-motor congruence appears to have a more robust impact.     

Selective attribution and the judgment of causality

Four experiments used a video game procedure to investigate the mechanism by which people are sensitive to the degree of contingency between two events. Subjects were presented with sets of trials on each of which they could perform a particular action and observe whether the action produced a particular outcome in a situation in which there was an alternative potential cause of the outcome. The experiments attempted to show that the process of selective attribution operates during exposure to a particular contingency and mediates the contingency judgment. In Experiment 1 the impact of outcomes occurring in the absence of the action was reduced by changing the location at which outcomes occurred following the action. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and showed that it was not due to simple changes in temporal contiguity, but rather was due to affecting the process of selective attribution. In Experiment 3 judgments were shown to increase when outcomes occurring in the absence of the action, outcomes which otherwise would reduce judgments of action-outcome contingency, were signaled. Finally, in Experiment 4 this effect was replicated, and in addition it was shown that the signaling effect is not simply due to the presence of the signal. For the effect to be shown, the signal must occur when the outcome occurs in the absence of the action.     

Bias and learning in temporal binding: Intervals between actions and outcomes are compressed by prior bias

It has consistently been shown that agents judge the intervals between their actions and outcomes as compressed in time, an effect named intentional binding. In the present work, we investigated whether this effect is result of prior bias volunteers have about the timing of the consequences of their actions, or if it is due to learning that occurs during the experimental session. Volunteers made temporal estimates of the interval between their action and target onset (Action conditions), or between two events (No-Action conditions). Our results show that temporal estimates become shorter throughout each experimental block in both conditions. Moreover, we found that observers judged intervals between action and outcomes as shorter even in very early trials of each block. To quantify the decrease of temporal judgments in experimental blocks, exponential functions were fitted to participants’ temporal judgments. The fitted parameters suggest that observers had different prior biases as to intervals between events in which action was involved. These findings suggest that prior bias might play a more important role in this effect than calibration-type learning processes.     

Wistar rats show episodic-like memory for unique experiences

Human episodic memory refers to the recollection of an unique past experience in terms of its details, its locale, and temporal occurrence. Episodic memory, even in principle, has been difficult to demonstrate in non-verbal mammals. Previously, we provided evidence that mice are able to form an integrated memory for "what," "where," and "when" aspects of single experiences by combining different versions of the novelty-preference paradigm, i.e., object recognition memory, the memory for locations in which objects were explored, and the temporal order memory for objects presented at distinct time points. In the present series of experiments we evaluated whether this paradigm, with minor modifications, also works with rats. We found that rats spent more time exploring an "old familiar" object relative to a "recent familiar" object, suggesting that they recognized objects previously explored during separate trials and remembered their order of presentation. Concurrently, the rats responded differentially to spatial object displacement dependent on whether an "old familiar" or "recent familiar" object was shifted to a location, where it was not encountered previously. These results provide strong evidence that the rats established an integrated memory for "what," "where," and "when." We also found that acute stress impaired the animal's performance in the episodic-like memory task, which, however, could be partially reversed by the N-Methyl-D-aspartate-receptors agonist D-cycloserine.     

Intentions and expectations in temporal binding

Recently, it has been shown that the perceived times of voluntary movements and their effects are perceived as shifted towards each other. This temporal binding phenomenon was explained by an integrated representation of movement and effect, facilitating operant learning and the experience of intentionality. Here, we investigated whether temporal binding depends on explicit intentional attributions. In Experiment 1, participants intended to either produce or avoid producing an effect (a tone) by the timing of their movements, with the ratio of success being fixed at 2:1. In Experiments 2 and 3, the influence of the action-effect contingency ratio on temporal binding was controlled for by removing the intentional attribution of the effect. The results indicate that temporal binding is a general associative mechanism that facilitates the learning of movement-effect contingencies. Beyond that, temporal binding is sensitive to explicit intentional attributions, which selectively enhance the link between an intentional movement and the effect a moving agent intends to produce.     

Temporal predictability enhances judgements of causality in elemental causal induction from both observation and intervention

When the temporal interval or delay separating cause and effect is consistent over repeated instances, it becomes possible to predict when the effect will follow from the cause, hence temporal predictability serves as an appropriate term for describing consistent cause-effect delays. It has been demonstrated that in instrumental action-outcome learning tasks, enhancing temporal predictability by holding the cause-effect interval constant elicits higher judgements of causality compared to conditions involving variable temporal intervals. Here, we examine whether temporal predictability exerts a similar influence when causal learning takes place through observation rather than intervention through instrumental action. Four experiments demonstrated that judgements of causality were higher when the temporal interval was constant than when it was variable, and that judgements declined with increasing variability. We further found that this beneficial effect of predictability was stronger in situations where the effect base-rate was zero (Experiments 1 and 3). The results therefore clearly indicate that temporal predictability enhances impressions of causality, and that this effect is robust and general. Factors that could mediate this effect are discussed.     

Second-order conditioning in human predictive judgements when there is little time to think

Associative accounts uniquely predict that second-order conditioning might be observed in human predictive judgements. Such an effect was found for cue X in two experiments in which participants were required to predict the outcomes of a series of training trials that included P + and PX-, but only when training was paced by requiring participants to make a prediction within 3 s on each trial. In Experiment 1 training on P + ended before training was given on PX - . In Experiment 2 trials with P+, PX-, T + and other cues were intermixed. In the unpaced group inhibitory learning was revealed by a summation test, TX versus TM, where M was a control stimulus. These results suggest either that pacing interferes with learning successive associations more than with learning simultaneous associations or that lack of time to think interferes with inferential processes required for this type of inhibitory learning.     

Lack of pervasiveness of the underconfidence-with-practice effect: boundary conditions and an explanation via anchoring

The authors investigated whether underconfidence in judgments of learning (JOLs) is pervasive across multiple study-test trials as suggested by A. Koriat, L. Sheffer, and H. Ma'ayan (2002) or whether underconfidence with practice (UWP) might be a kind of anchoring-and-adjustment effect, such that the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the UWP effect depends on whether recall is above a psychological anchor. Participants studied normatively difficult items or normatively easy items and made immediate JOLs or delayed JOLs. The UWP effect occurred for easy items, but for difficult items an overconfidence-with-practice (OWP) effect occurred for delayed JOLs and no bias occurred for immediate JOLs. The systematic occurrence of all 3 outcomes establishes boundary conditions for the UWP effect and confirms the hypothesis that underconfidence (or the lack thereof) may arise at least in part from an anchoring-and-adjustment mechanism.     

Temporal predictability facilitates causal learning

Temporal predictability refers to the regularity or consistency of the time interval separating events. When encountering repeated instances of causes and effects, we also experience multiple cause-effect temporal intervals. Where this interval is constant it becomes possible to predict when the effect will follow from the cause. In contrast, interval variability entails unpredictability. Three experiments investigated the extent to which temporal predictability contributes to the inductive processes of human causal learning. The authors demonstrated that (a) causal relations with fixed temporal intervals are consistently judged as stronger than those with variable temporal intervals, (b) that causal judgments decline as a function of temporal uncertainty, and (c) that this effect remains undiminished with increased learning time. The results therefore clearly indicate that temporal predictability facilitates causal discovery. The authors considered the implications of their findings for various theoretical perspectives, including associative learning theory, the attribution shift hypothesis, and causal structure models.     

Disappearing and appearing: Temporal binding effects are consistent across situations

Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and action outcomes. Previous studies were mostly confined to the situation of performing actions to make objects appear, while it remains unexplored whether we experience sense of agency when making objects disappear. Here, we examined the temporal binding effect, an implicit index of sense of agency, in performing actions to make objects disappear and compared the magnitude of this effect in the appearing and disappearing situations. Results showed that the temporal binding effect emerged when object’s disappearances served as action outcomes. Moreover, the temporal binding effects in the appearing and disappearing situations did not differ significantly. Our findings extend the temporal binding effect to the situation of voluntarily making objects disappear, suggesting a comparable level of implicit sense of agency when voluntarily making objects disappear and appear.     

Age-related equivalence and deficit in knowledge updating of cue effectiveness

Knowledge updating involves learning about cue effectiveness based on task experience. Priorresearch has yielded inconsistent conclusions regarding age and knowledge updating. To resolve this inconsistency, the authors analyzed the effects of aging within a single paradigm. Participants studied cue-target associates during 2 study-test trials. Cues included rhyme cues and highly effective category cues. On each study-test trial, different items were presented, and participants predicted recall performance, received a cued recall test, and postdicted performance. Knowledge updating was operationalized as an improvement in the accuracy of predictive judgments across trials. An age deficit was evident in improvements in absolute accuracy, whereas age equivalence was evident in relative accuracy. Evidence suggested that deficient inferential processes contributed to the age deficit in knowledge updating.