Effect of Agency on Perceived Timing of Audiovisual Stimuli

Agency alters the subjective sense of time and sensitivity to sensory stimulus. We quantified the effect of agency in the processing of audiovisual integration in the brain by psychophysical methods. In the experiment, either the subjects or the experimenter pressed two buttons, which generated a visual and an auditory stimulus respectively. Participants judged the temporal order of the successive audiovisual stimuli in both conditions. The results show that the involvement of subject´s agency increased the accuracy of judgments for the timing of the generated stimuli significantly. It is indicated that the subjective sense of time changes in a dynamical manner affected by the involvement of agency and sensori-motor contingency.