title: Illusory Temporal Binding in Meditators.
abstract: We investigate conditions in which more accurate metacognition may lead to greater susceptibility to illusion and thus conditions under which mindfulness meditation may lead to less accurate perceptions. Specifically, greater awareness of intentions may lead to an illusory compression of time between a voluntary action and its outcome ("intentional binding"). Here, we report that experienced Buddhist mindfulness meditators rather than non-meditators display a greater illusory shift of the timing of an outcome toward an intentional action. Mindfulness meditation involves awareness of causal connections between different mental states, including intentions. We argue that this supports improvements in metacognition targeted at motor intentions. Changes in metacognitive ability may result in an earlier and less veridical experience of the timing of action outcomes either through increased access to sensorimotor pre-representations of an action outcome or by affording greater precision to action timing judgements. Furthermore, as intentional binding is an implicit measure of the sense of agency; these results also provide evidence that mindfulness meditators experience a stronger sense of agency.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex and Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Brighton, UK ; School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Pevensey Building, Falmer, BN1 9QH UK.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Lush
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex and Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Brighton, UK.
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parkinson
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex and Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, Brighton, UK.
authors.forename: Zoltan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dienes
keywords: Causal binding; Intentional binding; Intentions; Mindfulness; Sense of agency; Time perception