Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Consciousness and Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/concog Intentional binding as a marker of agency across the lifespan Annachiara Cavazzana a,b,c, ⁎ , Chiara Begliomini a,d , Patrizia Silvia Bisiacchi a,d a Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, via Venezia, 8, Padova, Italy b Smell & Taste Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, TU Dresden, Fetscherstrasse 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany c Gösta Ekman Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Frescati Hagväg 9A, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden d Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Padova, Via Venezia, 8, Padova, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Sense of agency Intentional binding Lifespan Responsibility Frontal lobe ABSTRACT 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. 1. Introduction Our voluntary actions are typically accompanied by a Sense of Agency (SoAg; Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009). We feel that we can choose and control our own actions and consequently the outside world. Historically, SoAg has been a topic of interest mainly to philosophers (e.g., Gallagher, 2000; Pacherie, 2008), but over recent years it has also received attention from psychology and cognitive neuroscience researchers given its potential role in many aspects of our everyday life. In fact, SoAg is deeply entwined with our notions of freedom and is intrinsic to ethical and law questions concerning responsibility and guilt (e.g., Haggard & Chambon, 2012; Moretto, Walsh, & Haggard, 2011). Indeed, when we voluntarily perform actions, we feel responsible for them and for their consequences. The experience of agency is therefore a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which requires not only a plan to perform a goal-directed action, but also the ability to properly identify the consequences of that behaviour in the external world, avoiding and inhibiting erroneous and maladaptive behaviours (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009). These high-level cognitive abilities are usually part of the executive functions (EFs), supported by the functionality of frontal areas (Stuss & Levine, 2002). Even though there are no studies which have directly linked the SoAg to these cognitive functions (i.e., EFs), general scientific progress in recent years has nevertheless elucidated a clear picture of the neural bases of the SoAg, pinpointing an involvement of frontal, prefrontal and parietal areas in this phenomenon (e.g., Cavazzana, Penolazzi, Begliomini, & Bisiacchi, 2015; Khalighinejad, Di Costa, & Haggard, 2016; Khalighinejad & Haggard, 2015; Kühn, Brass, & Haggard, 2013; Moore, Ruge, Wenke, Rothwell, & Haggard, 2010; Renes, van Haren, Aarts, & Vink, 2015). As recently reported by Haggard (2017) in an elegant review, the experience of agency is mediated by the connectivity between frontal and prefrontal areas – responsible for planning and initiating actions – and parietal regions which are involved in monitoring the perceptual events. Their involvement is also supported by clinical studies which revealed that an http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.04.016 Received 17 November 2016; Received in revised form 1 April 2017; Accepted 24 April 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Via Venezia 12, 35131 Padova, Italy. E-mail address: annachiara.cavazzana@gmail.com (A. Cavazzana). Consciousness and Cognition 52 (2017) 104–114 1053-8100/ © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. MARK