Temporal binding during deliberate rule breaking

Abstract

Rules are deeply ingrained in our cognition. The current study investigates the influence of rule breaking on explicit sense of agency as well as the implicit perceptual illusion of temporal binding. Participants completed a free choice task that involved following or breaking a predetermined rule. The task required pressing a key that matched to a visual stimulus which triggered a corresponding change after a delay. Participants estimated the delay as an index of temporal binding. The results showed similar levels of explicit agency for rule following and breaking. Temporal binding, by contrast, was indeed influenced by rule breaking; however, the relationship is complex. Specifically, participants had smaller interval estimates for rule following vs. breaking at the 100 ms delay, likely reflecting cognitive conflict during rule breaking, whereas this effect reversed for the 400 ms and 700 ms delays. We interpret our results in relation to the wider rule breaking and temporal binding literature.