Sense of agency describes the feeling that you are the author of your own actions. The academic literature on sense of agency has exploded in the past two decades following the discovery of an apparently implicit measure of agency called intentional binding (IB). IB refers to the subjective contraction of the temporal interval between an action (e.g. pressing a light switch) and its putative outcome (the light coming on), compared to non-self-intentional event pairings (e.g. observing someone else switch on a light). Recent work from our group demonstrates several key challenges to using IB to measure agency. First, IB dissociates from explicit judgments of agency at least as often as it doesn’t - including important cases such as sense of agency for group actions. Second, when appropriate non-intentional event baseline conditions are used, such as watching your own movements replayed from a first-person perspective in virtual reality without making any action, evidence for IB disappears entirely. Third, taking the differential sensory precision of action and outcome events into account in simple multisensory causal-binding models fully explains IB effects without appealing to intention whatsoever. However, other recent findings using IB in the context of post-hypnotic suggestion of involuntariness provide the strongest evidence yet that the experience of agency is reflected in IB. In sum, these cases demonstrate that the instances in which IB appropriately indexes agency are much more limited than previously assumed and provide clear direction on where future investigations of the phenomenology of agency should be conducted.

By: Shelley Jenkins
Last updated: Monday, 10 December 2018