Temporal binding and agency under startle

Forward models are a component of the motor system that predicts the sensory consequences of our actions. These models play several key roles in motor control and are hypothesized to underlie (among other things) the two phenomena under investigation in this experiment: The feeling of agency that we have over self-initiated actions (as opposed to reflexes), and “temporal binding”, in which self-caused sensations are judged to have occurred earlier in time than they actually did. This experiment probes the connection between forward models and both of these phenomena using the “Startle” paradigm. In the Startle paradigm, a startlingly loud sound causes people to initiate a prepared action at a very short latency. It is hypothesized that the latency of a startle-initiated action is so short that normal cortical operations (including forward models) are circumvented. This experiment replicates the temporal-binding effect and simultaneously measures participants’ sense of agency over their actions. The results show that both the temporal-binding effect and the sense of agency we have over our own actions is disrupted under the startle paradigm in line with the theory that these phenomena both rely on forward models. Furthermore, this experiment provides evidence in support of the claim that a startle-induced action is qualitatively different from other actions.