Temporal Binding between Stimulus and Response

Temporal binding—the perceived compression of time between successive events—has been studied primarily between voluntary actions and their sensory outcomes and is often interpreted as an implicit marker of the sense of agency. A broader alternative is that temporal binding reflects the reconstruction of subjective time in accordance with inferred causal structure. Motivated by this account, we asked whether a similar distortion also arises between an imperative stimulus and the response it elicits. Across three preregistered experiments, we found converging evidence for temporal binding between stimulus and response (TBSR). In Experiment 1, a Libet clock task revealed the hallmark bidirectional attraction pattern: relative to baseline judgments of each event in isolation, imperative tones were perceived later and stimulus-triggered responses earlier. Experiments 2a and 2b then assessed interval perception directly using psychophysical two-alternative forced-choice judgments. In Experiment 2a, stimulus–response intervals were judged shorter than physically matched stimulus–stimulus intervals. In Experiment 2b, the same compression emerged relative to a physically matched passive button press baseline, indicating that the effect cannot be reduced to overt sensory sequence or temporal contingency alone. Together, these findings show that temporal binding is not confined to action–outcome episodes but also arises in stimulus–response episodes. More broadly, the findings are consistent with accounts in which subjective time is shaped by inferred causal structure and pose a challenge to the view that temporal binding serves as a selective marker of the sense of agency.