Visuospatial attention, temporal binding, and sense of agency.

Abstract

For over a century, subjective timing judgement has been studied by timing events with respect to a rotating clock. Participants watched a rapidly rotating clock hand and reported the time of a designated event (e.g., a sound) by giving the clock hand position. However, the distribution of visual attention around the clock has been suggested as a key factor influencing the "time" report. Specifically, if visual attention is future oriented (ahead of the clock hand position at the time of event occurrence), the reported location is delayed relative to the actual location. Conversely, past-oriented visual attention will masquerade as an advance of subjective timing. Thus, a change in the distribution of visuospatial attention could contribute to the difference in timing reports as found in temporal binding. The present study experimentally manipulated the distribution of visuospatial attention to shift toward either past or future locations of the clock hand. Successful manipulations of attention shift indeed led to predicted directional changes in timing reports, which were associated with corresponding directional changes in temporal binding. Similar manipulations that did not lead to attention changes were not associated with any changes in temporal binding. Furthermore, the attention account was extended to causal binding by a machine action, without any human voluntary component, suggesting that the interaction between attention and timing judgement is domain general and independent of mechanisms specific of intentional action. Therefore, the current study demonstrated an attention component in timing reports. Attention should be considered when interpreting the timing results obtained with the clock method. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).