Intentional binding as a marker of agency across the lifespan

- Sense of Agency (SoAg) is the feeling of controlling one's own actions.
- SoAg can be also altered, as in the case of neurological and psychiatric pathologies.
- The aim of the study was to explore how the SoAg changes across the lifespan.
- We used Intentional Binding as an implicit measure of the SoAg.
- Children and elderly exhibit a lack of agency as compared to young adults.

The feeling of control over actions and their external effects is known as Sense of Agency (SoAg). People usually have a distinctive SoAg for events caused by their own actions. However, if the agent is a child or an older person, this feeling of being responsible for the consequences of an action may differ from what an adult would feel. The idea would be that children and elderly may have a reduced SoAg since their frontal lobes are developing or have started to loose their efficiency. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether the SoAg changes across lifespan, using the Intentional Binding (i.e., the temporal attraction between a voluntary action and its sensory consequence) as implicit measure. Data show that children and elderly are characterized by a reduced SoAg as compared to adults. These findings provide a fundamental step in the characterization of SoAg dynamics throughout individuals' lifetime.