Evidence for individual differences in the temporal binding effect.

Abstract

The sense of agency is a fundamental aspect of human experience. Temporal binding, the subjective compression of the perceived time interval between an action and its outcome, has previously been assumed to be an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Here, we investigate whether the characteristic directionality of the temporal binding effect is consistently present at the individual level. We first deaggregated the data from three temporal binding data sets and systematically reanalyzed and revisualized these effects at the individual level. This analysis revealed consistent differences in the directionality of the temporal binding effect at the individual level. We next implemented a validated Bayes factor mixed-method modeling approach (Rouder & Haaf, 2021), which simulated individual true effects in two additional data sets and determined that the observed differences in directionality remained after accounting for sampling noise. Model comparison determined that the least constrained model, that is, the one that allowed for individual differences in the magnitude and directionality of the effect, was the best fitting model. These results provide strong support for the presence of qualitative differences in the temporal binding effect. Implications for both the theoretical and applied future of this literature are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).