Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Intentional binding (IB) is the experience of temporal interval compression between voluntary actions and subsequent events when the latter are perceived to be caused on purpose by the agent's actions. It can be measured experimentally by comparing the judgments of temporal intervals between either a voluntary act or an external event, and a later sensory consequence. Evidence suggests this might be modulated by the emotional valence of the consequence. However, controversies have arisen over the consistency of the results and the methodology they were obtained with. Here, we aimed to measure this affective modulation using a two-interval forced-choice (2AFC) discrimination task and word stimuli. Three factors were employed: agency (agency and passive), emotional valence (neutral, positive, and negative words), and interval duration ratio determined based on individual values of just noticeable differences (JND). Participants had to judge which of two intervals presented in each trial was shorter. Generalized linear mixed model analysis indicated that there was an effect of IB, but no affective modulation. Dissociation of component mechanisms of SoA are discussed to better understand results and suggest further directions.