Temporal perception in joint action: This is MY action

• We investigated Temporal Binding (TB) in sequential joint actions.
• We examined the temporal perception of other-generated events.
• Participants experienced a repulsion effect for other-generated events.
• This was independent from the kind of cause and from the kind of interaction.
• Thus, an ‘inverse binding’ occurs to preserve agency for self-generated events.

Here we investigated the temporal perception of self- and other-generated actions during sequential joint actions. Participants judged the perceived time of two events, the first triggered by the participant and the second by another agent, during a cooperative or competitive interaction, or by an unspecified mechanical cause. Results showed that participants perceived self-generated events as shifted earlier in time (anticipation temporal judgment bias) and non-self-generated events as shifted later in time (repulsion temporal judgment bias). This latter effect was observed independently from the kind of cause (i.e., agentive or mechanical) or interaction (i.e., cooperative or competitive). We suggest that this might represent a mental process which allows discriminating events that cannot plausibly be linked to one’s own action. When an event immediately follows a self-generated one, temporal judgment biases operate as self-serving biases in order to separate self-generated events from events of another physical causality.