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. 2019 Apr 24;5(4):eaav5698.
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aav5698. eCollection 2019 Apr.

Who hit the ball out? An egocentric temporal order bias

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Who hit the ball out? An egocentric temporal order bias

Ty Y Tang et al. Sci Adv. .

Abstract

Temporal order judgments can require integration of self-generated action events and external sensory information. We examined whether conscious experience is biased to perceive one's own action events to occur before simultaneous external events, such as deciding whether you or your opponent last touched a basketball heading out of bounds. Participants made temporal order judgments comparing their own touch to another participant's touch, a mechanical touch, or an auditory click. In all three manipulations, we find a robust bias to perceive self-generated action events to occur about 50 ms before external sensory events. We denote this bias to perceive self-actions earlier as the "egocentric temporal order" bias. Thus, if two players hit a ball nearly simultaneously, then both will likely have different subjective experiences of who touched last, leading to arguments.

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Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. The real-world case and experimental proxy.
(A) Two basketball players reaching toward the ball and nearly simultaneously knocking it out of bounds. (B) The experimental setup, with two participants sitting across a table, ready to tap one another’s hand. The green light cues participants when to touch. (C) Close-up on the participants’ hands. The participant on the left is preparing to tap the participant on the right. Photo credits: (A) J and L Photography, Getty Images Sport and (B and C) Robert Ewing, Arizona State University.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Visual demonstration of ETO and PSS offsets.
The black line indicates an individual’s probability of thinking they touched before or after the other participant, as a function of the time difference between the touches. The vertical green line indicates the time at which both touches from both participants were truly simultaneous; the horizontal green line indicates where participants are equally likely to respond “I touched first” or “they touched first.” The black dots on the bottom and top of each graph correspond to individual responses, coded I touched first and they touched first, respectively. (A) Plot of the predicted results, assuming participants perceive their own action events as occurring first. (B) A zoom in on the blue area of (A). The PSS is represented by the horizontal time offset from the origin, and the ETO bias is represented by the vertical judgment offset from the origin.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. Individual and overall average results.
The thin black lines represent each participant’s psychometric curves, and the bold black line indicates the mean across participants. The dark blue ribbon represents one SE, and light blue ribbon represents one SD. The black dots on the bottom and top of each graph correspond to individual responses, coded “I touched before” = 0 and “I touched after” = 1, respectively. (A) Experiment 1, two participants tap one another on the hand. (B) Experiment 2, one participant compared his/her touch time against a mechanical solenoid’s touch. (C) Experiment 3, one participant compared his/her touch time against an auditory click.

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