Temporal binding and social perception – A replication study

David HV Vogel; Manuela Woschei; Mathis Jording; Peter H Weiss; Kai Vogeley

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0352510

. 2026 Jul 14;21(7):e0352510. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510

Temporal binding and social perception – A replication study

David HV Vogel ^1,^*, Manuela Woschei ², Mathis Jording ², Peter H Weiss ^3,⁴, Kai Vogeley ^2,⁴

Editor: Elisa Scerrati⁵

PMCID: PMC13367721 PMID: 42447113

Abstract

Previous studies reported action-effect binding for social contexts in a variety of experimental contexts. When confronted with social information, perceptual or conceptual, participants underestimated the duration of time intervals between their actions and subsequent social events, as compared to only observing social events. Current evidence demonstrates stronger temporal binding both for conditions of believing in an interaction with a social partner, and for perceiving an interaction partner. Fewer data exist about the influence of exclusively perceptual social cues such as interaction with a face stimulus. We here report on a study investigating this so-called social hyperbinding for face perception. 40 participants performed a duration estimation task in four blocks involving either the active manipulation of gaze direction, the active manipulation of a geometric pattern, the passive observation of gaze direction, or the passive observation of movement in a geometric pattern. Although results indicated trends towards shorter time estimates for the active manipulation of gaze, with no visible differences in time perception for the other three conditions, our analysis did neither confirm temporal binding nor social hyperbinding for face stimuli. This finding challenges the theory of social hyperbinding for face stimuli. While stronger temporal binding for real and believed interactions with another human has been reliably replicated in the literature, the results from this experiment cannot confirm increased binding for face-like stimuli.

1. Introduction

Repeated investigation has demonstrated an influence of socio-cognitive processes on time perception [1–4]. More recently, paradigms investigating temporal binding (TB) during social interaction revealed a distinct influence of social factors [5–12]. TB refers to the relative underestimation of time intervals when the respective duration involves a preceding voluntary action [13,14]. Estimates by participants of time intervals between a voluntary action and a subsequent event are systematically shorter than estimates of time intervals between two arbitrary events of the same duration [14,15].

Studies involving social action and interaction repeatedly demonstrated an increase of TB for social event sequences. Most interestingly, this social hyperbinding [9] has been successfully replicated for event sequences involving the belief in another person [10]. In other words, it appears that both social stimuli (“bottom-up”) and social beliefs (“top-down”) are sufficient to elicit social hyperbinding.

During a simple TB experiment, participants judge durations between for example, key presses and subsequent auditory stimuli [15]. These ratings are compared to judgments of durations of identical lengths between for instance, two auditory stimuli. Across participants, the former judgements turn out shorter than the latter judgements. However, while watching another person perform the task [6] or when performing the task with another person [5,8,16], TB is smaller than while performing the task alone. A similar decrease in TB occurs when being ordered to perform actions as compared to performing actions at one’s own accord, while TB is stronger when leading actions of others [7].

The influence of a social context further becomes evident when actions result in changes in social stimuli. For example, when participants caused eye movements in a realistic picture of a face, durations judgments where shorter than when causing changes in scrambles of these pictures [17]. Ulloa et al. [18] relatedly demonstrated shorter time estimates when judging eye movements in realistic face stimuli.

These previous findings hold various implications, as, in theory, TB relates to different cognitive processes. For one, TB has been theorized to depend on the Sense of Agency – the feeling of being in control of one’s actions and their consequences (for review see [13,14]). It has been argued, that social hyperbinding relates to an increase in agency by the induction of joint agency [5,6]. The increase in control brought on by the interaction appears to be associated with the temporal compression between action and event.

The Sense of Agency account of temporal binding has, however, increasingly come under scrutiny over the past years. The critique is brought on by a surging number of findings indicating TB without intentional action [19–21]. Subsequent theory postulates that TB corresponds to causality and predictability [22–25]. The more information available about any succession of events, the more predictable the sequence becomes. With increasing predictability and temporal contiguity neural predictive processing improves. This improvement in turn results in the temporal compression detectable as TB [25–27].

Intentional action – action involving a Sense of Agency – poses a special subtype of such cause-effect sequences. During voluntary actions and their outcomes, the available information is maximized, as the sequence does not only involve bottom-up perceptual information, but also extensive top-down information in the form of believes and assumptions available prior to and during the performance of the action-event sequence [22,24,25].

Here, we wish to complement the two earlier studies by Vogel et al. [9,10]. In their studies, the authors completed a total of four experiments reporting social hyperbinding. In either study, the authors performed experiments designed to elicit a maximum effect of social influences on TB. In all experiments, participants judged time intervals between a left or right key press and a subsequent left or right movement on their computer screen. These intervals were compared to judgements of durations between the appearance of an arrow indicating either left or right and a subsequent left or right movement on the computer screen. The movement was either an eye movement of a face stimulus, or a movement in a geometric field composed of the same patterns as the face stimulus (see Fig 1). To maximize the available social information, participants were introduced to a confederate prior to the experiment and instructed that for all experimental blocks during which they were to see a face stimulus, the eye movements of the stimulus represented the eye movements of the confederate seated in front of an eye tracker in an adjacent room, responding to either theirs, or a computer’s commands. In reality, participants were always performing the task in interaction with a fully controlled experimental setup based on a computer algorithm.

Fig 1 — Participants performed 60 trials in four blocks. For active blocks (top row), participants pressed a key to cause either eye movements in a face (left column) or movements of dots in a geometric pattern (right column). For passive blocks participants observed the identical movements occurring after the appearance of an arrow below the stimulus. This resulted in the four combinations of active/face, active/pattern, passive/face, and passive/pattern.

Both studies report shorter time intervals for actions during social conditions. Whenever participants caused the eyes of a face to move while simultaneously thinking that they were interacting with another person, TB was stronger.

A second experiment reported in Vogel et al. (2022) [10] focused on the influence of social belief on TB. As in the experiment described above, the paradigm compared time judgements of intervals between a key press and a subsequent movement in a geometric field with judgments of intervals between the appearance of an arrow key and a subsequent movement. For half of the trials participants were made to believe they were interacting with another person, while during the other half, they were told they would be performing the experiment by themselves. Participants were, however, always performing the experiment by themselves. Just as in the previous experiment, judgements for durations between actions and movements were significantly shorter when participants believed to be interacting with a partner.

Vogel et al. (2021) [9] complement this finding by manipulating the combination of top-down social belief – meaning the belief in the confederate as an interactant – with bottom-up social perception – that is, a face-like stimulus. In four blocks, participants performed key presses either causing eye movements of a face or movements in a geometric field. For both, participants were made to believe to either be interacting with a partner, or to be performing the experiment by themselves. Time estimates were shorter for face-computer, face-confederate, and pattern-confederate conditions. Estimates for pattern-computer conditions were longest.

While these experiments [9,10] clearly demonstrate social hyperbinding based on evidence from both top-down and bottom-up manipulations, they lack the direct comparison between interaction (i.e., movements following actions) and passive observation (i.e., movements following the appearance of an arrow). To fill this gap, we conducted an experiment focused on the effects of a face stimulus versus a pattern stimulus during interaction and during observation. In accordance with social hyperbinding, we hypothesized that interaction with a face stimulus would cause time estimates to be shorter than during observation of a face stimulus and to be shorter than during the interaction with a pattern stimulus.

2. Method

In accordance with Vogel et al. [9,10], we used two different stimuli comprising a standardised face stimulus and a geometric stimulus consisting of the elements used to create the face stimulus (Fig 1). We presented stimuli in PsychoPy2 [28] on a 22-inch computer screen (resolution 1680 x 1050 pixels) against a standard grey background with a viewing distance of approximately 70 cm. Participants used a standard computer keyboard and mouse for their responses.

The stimulus material was selected according to Vogel et al. [9,10] and was highly schematic in nature (see Fig 1). To ensure the adequate identification of stimuli as faces and patterns, the block-wise instructions referred to the material specifically as “face” and “pattern”. Using different specific labels is important for the interpretation of stimuli, for example, [29] demonstrated that participants changed their behavior towards identical stimuli depending on whether they were referred to as either “gaze” or as “car”.

The paradigm resulted in a 2x2x2 factorial design. The factors manipulated were stimulus (face vs. pattern), agency (active vs. passive), and interval between initial event – either active key press or passive arrow observation – and its corresponding effect (400ms vs. 700ms). The experiment consisted of four blocks of 60 trials each. Stimulus and agency were presented by block in a crossover design. Intervals were randomized within blocks.

During active/pattern blocks, participants voluntarily pressed either a left or a right key on their computer keyboard at the time of their choosing (Fig 2). 400ms or 700ms after the key press the black dots in the pattern stimulus moved according to the indicated direction.

During passive/pattern block trials, participants were presented with the pattern stimulus (Fig 2). After between 2.5s to 3.5s a white arrow pointing either to the left or to the right appeared beneath the stimulus. Either 400ms or 700ms after the appearance of the arrow the two black dots in the pattern moved to the direction indicated by the arrow.

After both active and passive trials, a visual analogue scale appeared on screen ranging from 0 to 1000ms. With their computer mouse participants used the scale to provide an estimate of the interval between the cause (active, passive) and its effect (face, pattern).

For passive/face and active/face blocks the pattern stimulus was replaced by the face stimulus which moved its eyes represented by black dots in accordance with the initial events’ direction (arrow direction or key press direction).

Participants performed 60 trials per block, 30 with 400ms intervals and 30 with 700ms intervals, randomized across blocks. We counterbalanced blocks across participants. To guarantee full comparability with previous experiments [9,10] dots/eyes moved on every sixth trial to the opposite direction than indicated by the initial event. Due to the profound impact of highly schematic averted-gaze faces – such as the stimuli used in this study – on attention and interaction [30], these fail trials were excluded from data analysis.

All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Medical Faculty of the University of Cologne (No. 17–349). Written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. All participants were naïve as to the purpose of the experiment. Participants received 10€ per hour as compensation for their participation. The recruitment period started on August 28^th 2023 and ended on September 28^th 2023.

3. Results

Based on the effect sizes reported by Vogel et al. (2021) [9], we initially conducted an a priori power analysis in G*Power [31] for paired-samples comparisons with ⍺ = 0.05, desired power = 0.85, Cohen’s dz = 0.68, yielding a minimum target sample size of 22 participants. To account for modifications to the original paradigm and the use of linear mixed-effects modelling, we deliberately exceeded this estimate and recruited 40 participants (16 identifying as male, 24 identifying as female; mean age 28.2, SD 6.85).

We planned to conduct a linear mixed effects model as recommended for repeated measures designs [32,33] on participants’ duration estimates. Data were analyzed using the R-based software jamovi and the GAMLj module [34–36]. We plotted figures in R-studio [37]. The duration estimates in milliseconds constituted the continuous dependent variable. Jamovi’s Linear Mixed Models module GAMLj uses R’s lme4 package to fit models [38]. We aligned the linear mixed model structure according to the experimental structure, with agency, stimulus, and interval as fixed effects, and participant ID as random effect, specified as random intercepts. To determine the model’s random structure we adopted the simplification approach by Barr et al. [39], starting with the maximal random structure and dropping random slopes until the model converged. We opted for a maximum random structure to emphasize the replicative nature of the experiment and to minimize type I error probability.

The final model structure was Estimate ~ 1 + Agency + Stimulus + Interval + Agency:Stimulus + Agency:Interval + Stimulus:Interval + Agency:Stimulus:Interval+(1 + Agency + Stimulus + Interval + Agency:Stimulus + Agency:Interval + Stimulus:Interval | ID). The model was fitted using Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) and the Bound Optimization by Quadratic Approximation (bobyqa) optimizer. The final model successfully converged. Degrees of freedom for the fixed effects were computed using the Satterthwaite approximation. Significance thresholds were set at 0.05.

The model explained a substantial portion of the variance (R2(marginal) = 0.203; R2(conditional) = 0.626), with visual residual diagnostics indicating minor, non-severe deviations from normality and homoscedasticity.

We found significant differences between estimates for the factor interval (700ms - 400ms: F(1, 39)=123.845; M = −187.25ms, SE = 16.83ms, t = 11.13, p < 0.001). We detected a trend towards significance for the factor stimulus (face – pattern: F(1, 39) = 3.685; M = −16.35, SE = 8.52, t = −1.92, p = 0.062). The main effect of agency was not significant (active – passive: F(1, 39)=0.669; M = −10.79, SE = 13.19, t = −0.818, p = 0.418), confirming the null hypothesis for an emergence of TB in this sample.

The interaction between agency and stimulus showed a trend towards significance (active – passive * face – pattern: F(1, 39)=3.324; M = −27.31, SE = 14.98, t = −1.823, p = 0.076). The interactions with the factor interval, including the three-way interaction, were not significant, (agency * interval: F(1, 39)=0.704, M = 9.2, SE = 11.02, t = 0.839, p = 0.407; stimulus × interval: F(1, 39)=2.900, M = 12.35, SE = 7.25, t = 1.703, p = 0.097; agency * stimulus * interval: F(1, 7719)=0.363; M = −6.91, SE = 11.47, t = −0.602, p = 0.547)

Post-hoc comparisons for the Agency × Stimulus interaction collapsed across interval revealed no Bonferroni-corrected significant effects. The comparison between active pattern and active face was significant before correction (M = 30.01, SE = 12.90, t(39) = 2.326, p = 0.025), but not after Bonferroni correction (p_bonf = 0.152). All remaining contrasts were non-significant both before and after correction (active/pattern vs. passive/face: M = 5.56, SE = 14.57, t(39) = 0.382, p = 0.705, p_bonf = 1.000; passive/face vs. active/face: M = 24.44, SE = 15.32, t(39) = 1.595, p = 0.119, p_bonf = 0.712; passive/pattern vs. active/face: M = 27.14, SE = 16.75, t(39) = 1.620, p = 0.113, p_bonf = 0.680; passive/pattern vs. active/pattern: M = −2.87, SE = 15.01, t(39) = −0.191, p = 0.849, p_bonf = 1.000; passive/pattern vs. passive/face: M = 2.69, SE = 9.53, t(39) = 0.283, p = 0.779, p_bonf = 1.000) Fig 3.

Fig 3 — Participant means for the pattern stimulus are depicted in the first two columns on each side in dark grey; participant means for the face stimulus are depicted in light grey in the two columns to their right. Data points on the left represent passive conditions during which participants observed durations between the appearance of an arrow and a subsequent movement in the presented stimulus. Data points on the right represent time estimates for active conditions during which participants actively caused the stimulus movement by pressing a button. Note the reduction in temporal estimates in the condition active/face for both durations (400ms, 700ms). Error bars depict standard error (SE).

Overall these result are similar to the two earlier studies [9,10] in magnitude, yet the analysis did not yield statistically significant results for the effects and interactions in question. In particular the data did not reveal social hyperbinding. Table 1 lists the relevant values from all three studies for comparison.

Table 1. Magnitude of Social Hyperbinding Across Studies and Experiments. Mean Binding Difference (ms) reflects the contrast between social and non-social conditions within each paradigm. In full operant–observant designs (Vogel et al., 2021, Exp. 1; Vogel et al., 2022, Exp. 1), this corresponds to the Agency × Partner interaction, where Partner denotes whether the action outcome was depicted by a face stimulus and believed to be produced by another person or was depicted as a pattern believed to be produced by a computer. In operant-only designs (Vogel et al., 2021, Exp. 2), the relevant contrast is the Stimulus effect (Face vs. Pattern), indexing bottom-up social cue processing as targeted by the present study. In belief-manipulation paradigms (Vogel et al., 2022, Exp. 2), the effect corresponds to Agency × Story, where Story reflects whether participants believed they were interacting with a human agent or a computer system while the action outcome was always depicted as a moving pattern stimulus. In the current study, the relevant contrast is Agency × Stimulus (Face vs. Pattern), capturing the interaction between action and social perceptual cues. Positive values indicate stronger temporal binding in social relative to non-social conditions. For Vogel et al. (2022), who investigated TB in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), values from typically developed participants and ASD values are simple-effect estimates derived from the reported mixed-model coefficients; inferential statistics correspond to the fixed effects reported in the original models. ANOVA results are reported as F-statistics; mixed-model results are reported as t-statistics.

Study	Experiment	Sample	Sample Size	Effect of Interest	Analysis Strategy	Mean Binding Difference (ms)	Test Statistic	P-values
Vogel et al. (2021)	Exp. 1	Typically Developed	24	Agency × Partner	Repeated measures ANOVA	≈ 60	F(1,23) = 11.02; ƞ2 = 0.324	.003
Vogel et al. (2021)	Exp. 2 (operant only)	Typically Developed	32	Stimulus (Face vs. Pattern)	Repeated measures ANOVA	≈ 30	F(1,31) = 5.85	.022
Vogel et al. (2022)	Exp. 1	Full sample (Typically Developed + ASD)	48	Agency × Partner	Linear Mixed Model	33.24	t = −5.380	<.001
		Typically Developed	24	Agency × Partner		33.24	—	—
		ASD	24	Agency × Partner		6.62	—	—
				Agency × Partner × Group		—	t = 2.154	.031
	Exp. 2	Full sample (Typically Developed + ASD)	45	Agency × Story	Linear Mixed Model	40.70	t = −6.834	<.001
		Typically Developed	22	Agency × Story		40.70	—	—
		ASD	23	Agency × Story		15.30	—	—
				Agency × Story × Group		—	t = −2.133	.033
Current Study	—	Typically Developed	40	Agency × Stimulus	Linear Mixed Model	27.31	t = −1.823	.076

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To evaluate the sensitivity of the present design, we conducted a post-hoc simulation-based power analysis using jamovi’s pamlj module [40] for the final linear mixed-effects model using the observed fixed and random effect structure and the final sample size (N = 40; 8000 observations total). The simulation indicated excellent power for detecting the main effect of interval (1-β = 1.00). However, the power for the main effects of agency and stimulus was low (1-β = 0.14) to moderate (1-β = .51), respectively. The power for the stimulus × interval interaction (1-β = 0.74) and the agency × stimulus interaction – the primary effect of theoretical interest regarding social hyperbinding – was moderate (1-β = 0.48), while the power for the agency × interval interaction was low (1-β = .15). These findings suggest that although the present design was sufficiently sensitive to detect large interval-related effects, it had a reduced sensitivity for smaller agency-related interaction effects. Consequently, the absence of statistically significant evidence for social hyperbinding in the present study should be interpreted cautiously, as smaller interaction effects may have remained undetected.

4. Discussion

We conducted a temporal binding paradigm in order to complement earlier findings on social hyperbinding. Previous studies had indicated a pronounced TB effect for social interaction [5,6 7,8,11,12], with some suggesting a similar effect for face stimuli [9,10,17,18]. In summary, we failed to convincingly reject the null hypothesis of binding for the active manipulation of faces. While the data indicated a visible trend towards an occurrence of shorter time estimates primarily for interactions with a face stimulus – suggestive of hyperbinding – only the differentiation of durations and none of the other effects and interactions surpassed the preset significance threshold.

This contradicts earlier hypotheses on a ubiquitous social hyperbinding independent from whether social information is presented as a belief in the presence of another person or is presented as a social stimulus [9,10]. Contrary to our initial hypotheses and prior findings reported by Vogel et al. [9,10], our study cannot provide statistically significant evidence for either an effect of agency or of a face stimulus on time perception. The only statistically significant finding in our data was the main effect of interval, reflecting participants’ general sensitivity to differences in temporal duration.

These null findings call into question whether the previously reported effects of social hyperbinding, that is enhanced TB during social interaction, can be robustly replicated in the absence of additional factors such as belief in human agency or social engagement. Unlike in Vogel et al. [9,10], our experiment did not include a social cover story or explicit interpersonal framing. The lack of significant effects in the present study may suggest that social hyperbinding, to the extent that it occurs, may require more than just the perceptual presence of a face-like stimulus.

It is important to note that the absence of any reliable TB effect in our data – regardless of condition – is itself potentially meaningful. It suggests that the underlying conditions for TB were not met in this paradigm. If no temporal binding is elicited in the baseline condition, then modulations of that binding by stimulus type or agency become theoretically and statistically less likely. This absence may reflect boundary conditions for the TB effect, particularly in paradigms using temporal magnitude estimation without anchoring or feedback [41,42].

The cognitive demands of our task may have contributed to this outcome. Participants judged durations across repeated trials with varying action-outcome delays, while also being presented with face-like and abstract stimuli. These dual demands on attention and cognition could plausibly disrupt the implicit temporal compression in TB. TB is typically strongest under conditions of high temporal predictability [25–27] and low cognitive load [43,44]; when task effort increases TB may be weakened or masked. Thus, our null finding may reflect a genuine absence of binding under cognitively demanding conditions, rather than an artifact of low power or insufficient manipulation.

It remains possible that social stimulus material may not strengthen TB, but may in fact weaken or disrupt it under certain conditions. The presence of socially salient stimuli, such as faces, could introduce competing attentional or cognitive demands that interfere with the processes underlying TB. Notably, Ulloa et al. [18], while reporting shortened duration estimates in response to gaze shifts of naturalistic face stimuli, did not include a passive control condition in their design. Without this comparison, it is difficult to determine whether the observed effect reflects increased TB in the social condition or a general reduction in temporal estimates due to social salience. Our data, which included both active and passive conditions, did not show such a specific difference between active and passive conditions. This would further suggest that social stimuli alone are insufficient to produce reliable TB effects and could in some cases even attenuate them. However, this serves as an alternative hypothesis, as a possible limitation or flaw in our paradigm might better explain our results.

Several limitations of our study may have contributed to the null effects. The task we used – a temporal magnitude estimation task – was not optimized for precise time estimation and is subject to individual anchoring biases [10,41,42]. In addition, we did not include a manipulation check to confirm that participants perceived stimuli as intended (meaning as faces vs. patterns). While schematic faces may evoke attentional processes comparable to those triggered by realistic faces [45], we cannot guarantee that such attentional effects transfer to our paradigm. This potential deficit in ecological validity may have negatively influenced effect sizes by reducing emotional intensity or activation of mentalizing or mirroring processes [46], subsequently resulting in a perceptual difference between stimuli too subtle to elicit a measurable effect in time estimation. These factors limit the interpretability of any trends and highlight the need for further rigorous paradigms in future research.

Overall, our data do not replicate the key interaction effects between agency and social stimulus that have been interpreted as evidence for social hyperbinding. While prior studies suggest that such effects may arise under certain conditions – particularly when involving social beliefs [9,10] – our results provide no evidence for their occurrence in the current paradigm. Future studies should investigate the boundary conditions under which TB and social hyperbinding may or may not emerge, ideally using designs that further isolate and compare the contributions of perceptual, attentional, and belief-driven factors.

The results of this study emphasize the question about the direct relationship between social perception and social belief. The examination of how interacting with an object of non-human appearance in the belief in a human interactant controlling this object relates to interacting with an object of human appearance knowing that it is not controlled by another person might provide important insight into the relationship between bottom-up and top-down social cognition. Speculatively, as previous work [10], replicated social hyperbinding for social belief without face stimuli (see Table 1), yet our current study did not replicate social hyperbinding for face stimuli without social belief, the introduction of a cover story might elicit increased TB where a social stimulus might not.

In conclusion, although our study was motivated by previous findings suggesting an interplay between agency, social stimuli, and time perception, the present data do not support these effects. We found no significant evidence for social hyperbinding or agency-driven TB for social perception alone, and thus our results contribute to an increasingly nuanced picture of when and how social context influences human time perception and TB. Replication efforts with higher statistical power, manipulation checks, and a broader range of social stimuli are needed to more definitively assess the reliability and generalizability of these effects.

Data Availability

Experimental materials, data, and analysis files for all experiments are available on the OSF (osf.io/vpyd9).

Funding Statement

KV was supported by the EC, Horizon 2020 Framework Programme, FET Proactive [Grant agreement ID: 824128]. KV was supported by the Network of European Funding for Neuroscience Research (NEURON) under the ERA-NET scheme of the European Commission, with funds from BMBF, Germany (01GP1822).

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r001

Decision Letter 0

Elisa Scerrati

16 Feb 2026

-->PONE-D-25-67312-->-->Temporal Binding and Social Perception – a Replication Study-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Vogel,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

-->-->

Your paper has now been reviewed by two experts in the field, and I am grateful for their thorough and constructive feedback. Both reviewers recognize the value of transparently reporting null results on temporal binding and social perception. However, they raise important concerns that must be addressed in a revision. The primary issue concerns data sharing, as they both find your current justification for withholding data as insufficient and strongly urge you to share anonymized raw data and analysis scripts publicly, so do I. Additionally, both reviewers have provided detailed comments on methodological and statistical aspects that require systematic attention. These include: clarification of the power analysis, stimuli ecological validity considerations, complete reporting of all performed analyses, and deeper investigation of the relationship between current and previous findings. Please address each point systematically in your response letter.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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-->5. Review Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: This study investigated whether temporal binding is enhanced by social perception, specifically by interacting with a face stimulus. Participants performed a time estimation task in active and passive conditions using face and non-social pattern stimuli. Although a trend toward shorter time estimates was observed when participants actively interacted with a face, the results did not provide reliable evidence for temporal binding or social hyperbinding driven by face perception alone.

Overall, the study is well conducted and clearly fits the aims and scope of the journal (in this case, publishing null results). I have only a few minor comments that I believe could help to further improve the clarity and interpretation of the manuscript.

One important limitation concerns the low ecological validity of the stimuli. Although it is well established that highly schematic faces can elicit social attentional processes comparable to those triggered by real faces - please refers to a recent evidence; (Dalmaso et al., 2025) - there remains some uncertainty about how participants actually perceived the different stimuli in the present study. In this respect, the absence of a manipulation check represents a limitation, as such a measure could have helped to assess whether the face stimuli were indeed perceived as socially meaningful and distinct from the pattern stimuli. I would therefore encourage the authors to expand the Discussion by explicitly addressing the issue of ecological validity and stimulus perception, and by considering how this aspect may have contributed to the null results.

I would appreciate some clarification regarding the power analysis. The sample size seems to have been determined using GPower based on a paired-samples t-test effect size, while the data were analysed using linear mixed-effects models. I would therefore welcome clarification on how this power calculation maps onto the mixed-model framework and the specific effects of interest (e.g., interactions), and whether it provides an adequate estimate of statistical power for the reported analyses.

Lastly, I was unclear about the reasons for not sharing the data publicly. Given that the study appears to involve standard behavioural measures (time estimates, experimental conditions, anonymous participant IDs), it is not obvious which privacy concerns would prevent the release of a fully de-identified dataset. I would encourage the authors to clarify this point and, if possible, to consider making the data publicly available in line with open science and replication practices (this is particularly relevant for a journal like Plos One).

Reference

Dalmaso, M., Galfano, G., Baratella, A., & Castelli, L. (2025). A direct comparison of gaze-mediated orienting elicited by schematic and real human faces. Acta Psychologica, 255, 104934. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.104934

Reviewer #2: In their study, the authors attempt to replicate findings from previous experiments, where they found a temporal hyperbinding of actions and social effects. In particular, participants reported shorter time intervals between actions and effects they believed to represent another humans behaviour and were represented on a face like stimulus as compared to a geometrical pattern that was not related to another humans behaviour. In the current study they contrasted the two stimuli without a social cover story and found no significant temporal binding at all.

I commend the authors for transparently reporting their null results! Exploring the specific mechanisms and boundary conditions of temporal binding is, I believe, a very current issue which is why these results are very much worth publishing.

However, the lack of raw data and without any (reported) exploratory tests, it is difficult to understand the reason, why the previously found temporal binding effect was absent here.

Major Point 1:

If I understand correctly, the face condition in the current study is identical to the one used in Experiment 1 of Vogel et al. (2021). The only change seems to have been made to the pattern condition, where the movement was adapted to more closely match the movement of the face stimulus. The conditions in Experiment 1 of your study Vogel et al. (2022) are fully identical with the only exception that both original experiments include a cover story, which relates the eye movements to a real person. Despite the face conditions being “on the face of it” identical in all sets, the original studies reported clear temporal binding (TB), whereas the present data do not.

Several interpretations of this come to mind which probably each warrant a separate response. Nevertheless, they all pertain to the relationship between this data and the one from your original study, and may also, especially if I misunderstood or overlooked something, be answered together:

Major 1A: The sample sizes differ. The earlier experiments had a smaller sample (of neurotypical participants), than the current experiment. Although temporal binding often shows a robust mean effect, interindividual differences are notoriously high. It would therefore be informative to examine whether the effect survives a pooled analysis of the three samples. Since this paper is to be published as a stand-alone, I think it would be helpful to include the results you are trying to replicate in one of the graphs. Right now, I had to circle back to your original studies to really grasp the reasoning and the key differences. As figures are quite different between the three manuscripts, a unified depiction would help me (and presumably others) a lot.

Major 1B: The analysis strategy also differed between studies. In your 2021 study, ANOVAs were conducted, whereas the 2022 and the present study uses a mixed model with Subject ID as a random factor. I wonder what motivated you to switch from ANOVAs to mixed models. Honestly, I do not assume that an ANOVA would have given you any different results here. Nevertheless, a direct comparison of both analyses on both datasets would be interesting. As far as I understand, you did do a t-test on the specific contrast already but never reported it.

Major 1C: Modifying the movement of the pattern stimulus may have influenced the overall interpretation of the stimuli, including the perception of the face stimulus. In my opinion, the pattern stimulus has more than just a little resemblance to a sideways face. May the critical factor in the earlier experiment have been not the “socialness” of the face stimulus per se, but rather the perceived socialness of the effect (moving eyes vs shifting overall position). If I read your papers correctly, this is not the case in the 2022 study, but still, the face is associated with a real person here and the pattern is not. I wonder what the authors would predict if the reinstated their cover story for the pattern but not the face. Or if they had the whole face move (like the pattern in the 2021 study) while the pattern only moved the black dots.

I understand completely, that the main problem was a lack of temporal binding altogether. Unless it was pure chance, I still feel like there is much potential here to disentangle the influencing factors and possibly find the relevant conditions that diminish temporal binding.

Major Point 2:

I encourage the authors to report the mean effect for agency, even if (or especially because) it is not statistically significant. It would also be helpful to know whether there is significant temporal binding in the social condition alone. Once again, I am convinced you must have done this test in the “other t-tests that were not significant”, but please share them with the readership.

More generally, I recommend reporting the mean effects and effect sizes for all primary comparisons, along with the results of all follow-up t-tests - simply all tests that you performed. To keep the manuscript slim, you could consider including a comprehensive table of all tests and results in an online repository.

Major Point 3:

Speaking of online repositories, I am not persuaded by the authors’ justification for not sharing their data openly. It sounds very much like a standard phrase as there are no patients included in this study. I strongly urge the authors to share their (anonymized) raw data and analysis scripts on a platform such as the OSF. Open sharing reduces barriers to replication, reanalysis, and meta-analyses. Providing data on demand has multiple disadvantages, as authors can become uncontactable, and data may be lost on local machines. While open platforms are not perfect, they provide an additional layer of security and accessibility for valuable datasets. Please seriously consider this and if it’s not an option for you, please provide a more specific explanation why not for this data set.

In any case, I would request the authors to share the anonymized raw data and analysis script of this experiment as well as the previous studies (at least Experiment 1 from both) with me and all other reviewers for the next round of reviews.

Minor Points

• The statement that temporal binding is strongest under “high temporal predictability and low cognitive load” (ll. 244-245) and may be weakened or masked when task complexity increases, reads as somewhat contrived. While the claim may be correct, it is not self-evident. Please provide supporting citations.

• Additionally, the claim that social information “may draw attention away from temporal processing, leading to compressed duration estimates” (ll.265-266) seems quite at odds with the earlier argument that temporal binding is strongest under low cognitive load.

• The statement that “social stimulus material may not strengthen temporal binding, but may in fact weaken or disrupt it under certain conditions” (ll. 249-250) does not convince me as currently argued. In your experiment, the difference between passive and active trials was smaller, descriptively reversed even, in non-social trials. Additionally, the social connotation in your original experiments was much stronger. Would it not make more sense to consider a possible limitation or flaw in the current experimental design rather than concluding that social stimuli weaken temporal binding?

• The argument beginning with “Given these null results, we urge caution…” at l. 258 - 261 is a bit repetitive.

• The manuscript contains frequent use of “e.g.” and “i.e.”, particularly in the introduction. At least according to APA standard, these should only be used in parentheses. Personally, I find this rule sensible, as these abbreviations disrupt the reading flow so to speak. Of course this is just for your consideration.

Overall, it is an interesting manuscript and especially the reporting of null results aids the current discourse. Still, the discussion is quite ambiguous, as the authors seemingly (and understandably) didn’t really know what to make of the surprising lack of temporal binding. I would be interested in a few more substantiated ideas or exploratory analyses on this, for example in relation to the questions posed in Major Point 1.

I am very much looking forward to reading the authors thoughts on this.

Best wishes!

Annika Klaffehn

**********

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes: Annika L. Klaffehn

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PLoS One. 2026 Jul 14;21(7):e0352510. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 1

13 Apr 2026

Reviewer Comments to the Author — Point by Point Reply:

We appreciate the reviewer’s positive feedback.

—————————————————————

We thank the reviewer for the close reading of our manuscript and agree that in its current form the limitation brought on by the schematic nature of the stimulus material falls short. We appreciate the addition of the work by Dalmaso et al. (2025), which we had not been aware of to date and now feature in the manuscript. We have amended the discussion section to more thoroughly develop the limitation. The paragraph on page 9 now reads:

“In addition, we did not include a manipulation check to confirm that participants perceived stimuli as intended (i.e., as faces vs. patterns). While schematic faces may evoke attentional processes comparable to those triggered by realistic faces (Dalmaso et al., 2025), we cannot guarantee that such attentional effects transfer to our paradigm. This potential deficit in ecological validity may have negatively influenced effect sizes by reducing emotional intensity or activation of mentalizing or mirroring processes (Vogeley, 2017), subsequently resulting in a perceptual difference between stimuli too subtle to elicit a measurable effect in time estimation. These factors limit the interpretability of any trends and highlight the need for further rigorous paradigms in future research.”

——————————————————

We thank the reviewer for this important point and appreciate the opportunity to clarify our power analysis.

The a-priori power analysis was conducted in G*Power based on a paired-samples t-test because the only available prior study closely matching our experimental paradigm reported its results using a repeated-measures ANOVA framework (Vogel et al., 2021). The reported effect size was converted to Cohen’s d and used to estimate the required sample size. The selected effect most closely corresponded to the within-subject contrast central to our primary hypothesis. Although our confirmatory analyses were conducted using a linear mixed-effects model, the powered contrast corresponds directly to a fixed effect in the mixed-model framework. We have added the following clarification to the manuscript on page 6:

"We acknowledge that power analyses based on t-tests do not fully account for the additional variance components estimated in LMMs (e.g., random intercepts and slopes). However, given the fully within-subject design and balanced structure, and because the effect size was derived from a comparable paradigm (Vogel et al., 2021), we consider this approach a reasonable and conservative approximation at the planning stage. Importantly, the final sample size exceeded the minimum estimated by the a-priori power analysis.”

—————————————————————————-

We wholeheartedly agree with the reviewer. After consultation with both the approving ethics committee, our data security officer, and the journal editor we are now able to publish the data at our discretion.

The data are available at: osf.io/vpyd9

Reviewer #2: In their study, the authors attempt to replicate findings from previous experiments, where they found a temporal hyperbinding of actions and social effects. In particular, participants reported shorter time intervals between actions and effects they believed to represent another human’s behaviour and were represented on a face like stimulus as compared to a geometrical pattern that was not related to another human’s behaviour. In the current study they contrasted the two stimuli without a social cover story and found no significant temporal binding at all.

However, the lack of raw data and without any (reported) exploratory tests, it is difficult to understand the reason, why the previously found temporal binding effect was absent here.

We thank the reviewer for their appreciation of our results and fully agree with the stated relevance of boundary conditions to temporal binding (TB) and psychological effects in general. In the following, we will address the important issues the reviewer raises.

—————————————

Major Point 1:

We appreciate the reviewer’s appreciation of our work. Contrary to the reviewer’s understanding, we must point out that the experiments referred to in this comment were identical, but differ from the experiment described in this study. Both the first experiments in Vogel et al., 2021 and 2022 entailed a combination of a face stimulus and a cover story, thereby confounding these two aspects of sociality. In contrast, the current study attempts to clarify the true nature of the influence of face/gaze perception on TB. This confusion underscores the reviewer’s following points which we addressed in a new table 1 explained and depicted below. Table 1 includes a column (named “Effect of Interest”) dedicated at stimulus/cover story combinations in these studies.

—————————————

We thank the reviewer for this thoughtful and constructive suggestions. We agree that a clearer, unified depiction of the previously reported effects improves transparency and makes the manuscript more self-contained.

To address this point, we have now added Table 1, which summarizes all relevant experiments from Vogel et al. (2021, 2022) alongside the present study. The table reports the specific effect of interest in each paradigm (i.e., Agency × Partner, Agency × Story, Agency × Stimulus), the corresponding mean temporal binding difference, and the original inferential statistics. For the 2022 study, we additionally report group-specific (TD and ASD) effect magnitudes derived from the published mixed-model coefficients, as well as the formal test of group moderation.

This unified presentation will allow readers to directly compare effects across paradigms and samples without having to consult the earlier manuscripts. It includes the mean social hyperbinding effect. The magnitude observed in the present study (27.31ms) falls within the previously reported range, albeit not reaching statistical significance.

Regarding the suggestion of a pooled analysis, the prior studies differ in design, rendering a direct pooled model across all datasets statistically inappropriate for a replication study. We therefore opted for a structured comparative summary of effect magnitudes and statistical tests across experiments, which we believe more accurately reflects the replication logic.

We hope that this addition improves clarity and addresses the reviewer’s concern about robustness and variability. Please see the added Table 1 in the attached file.

————————————————————-

We thank the reviewer for this thoughtful comment. The shift from repeated-measures ANOVA (2021 study) to linear mixed-effects models (2022 and present study) reflects an evolution in our analytic approach rather than a conceptual change. Mixed-effects models allow us to analyze trial-level data without aggregation, appropriately model subject-level variability, and handle potential imbalance or missing data more flexibly. For these reasons, they are now generally recommended for within-subject designs of this kind. However, and as mentioned in your introduction of Major 1, we believe point Major 1B to be complementary to Major 1A. We hence list Test statistics results in Table 1.

————————————————-

I understand completely that the main problem was a lack of temporal binding altogether. Unless it was pure chance, I still feel like there is much potential here to disentangle the influencing factors and possibly find the relevant conditions that diminish temporal binding.

We thank the reviewer for this highly interesting suggestion concerning further paradigm changes and social binding effects! A comparison between the purely perceptual versus the belief socialness — in other words comparing pattern/story to face/no-story stimuli — would shed further light on the relationship between both aspects of social hyperbinding. Two competing potential results come to mind: a) the null hypothesis with a similar result as seen in the current study; b) increased binding for the pattern/story combination. We strongly favor the latter — particularly in a within subjects design — as in our opinion the previous studies suggest a superiority of or preference for social belief in social temporal binding causation. However, this would require an additional experiment and is beyond the scope of this replication study.

We have added this intriguing idea to the discussion section’s paragraph about future investigations on page 9. We also believe that Table 1 increases readability of this intricate research design. The rewritten paragraph now reads:

“The results of this study emphasize the question about the direct relationship between social perception and social belief. The examination of how interacting with an object of non-human appearance in the belief in a human interactant controlling this object relates to interacting with an object of human appearance knowing that it is not controlled by another person might provide important insight into the relationship between bottom-up and top-down social cognition. Speculatively, as previous work (Vogel et al, 2022), replicated social hyperbinding for social belief without face stimuli (see Table 1), yet our current study did not replicate social hyperbinding for face stimuli without social belief, the introduction of a cover story might elicit increased TB where a social stimulus might not.”

———————————————-

Major Point 2:

We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion to improve readability and replicability. We have extended our results section by the req

Attachment

Submitted filename: 26-03-18_rebuttal_V1.2.docx

pone.0352510.s002.docx^{(31KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r003

Decision Letter 1

Elisa Scerrati, Elisa Scerrati

8 May 2026

-->PONE-D-25-67312R1-->-->Temporal Binding and Social Perception – a Replication Study-->-->PLOS One

Dear Dr. Vogel,

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 22 2026 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

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Additional Editor Comments:

While both Reviewers acknowledge the improvements resulting from your reviews, Reviewer 2 point out some minor linguistic issues and a more serious concern about power analysis, which I strongly encourage you to consider.

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Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I am happy with this new version. I can therefore suggest the publication of this paper in the current form.

Reviewer #2: Dear Authors

Thank you for uploading the raw data. While I admit I was a bit disappointed that you did not share my enthusiasm for the exploratory cross-experiment analyses, which I would have found worthwhile despite the differences in cover stories, I do understand the reasoning. In any case, making the full dataset available largely addresses this concern, as interested readers can carry out these analyses themselves. I also appreciate your explanation regarding the discussion and the somewhat loosely connected set of hypotheses. Although the revisions in this section appear modest, in my opinion the text reads more clearly now. In particular, the section summarizing the study’s limitations is very helpful. Thank you as well for including a table with the summary statistics, which, as you put it, makes the article more self-contained. Overall, I believe the article is almost ready for publication. While reading, I only noticed a few minor errors and some slightly awkward phrasings that seem to have been overlooked during internal review. Additionally, I would ask the authors to review their power analysis once more, as I was not totally convinced by the changes they made.

P. 2 “However, while watching another person perform the task [6] or when performing the task with another person [5, 8, 16], TB is shorter than while performing the task alone. “

“TB is shorter” seems very weird to me and left me wondering whether you actually wanted to say that ratings became shorter. I guess the TB effect became smaller or decreased would be clearer.

P.3 “For one, TB has been thought to depend on the Sense of Agency –“

I stumbled a bit over this sentence. I’m not a native speaker so feel free to completely ignore me if I’m wrong, but is “thought” correct here? I would have expected something like “considered”, “believed” or “theorized”.

P. 4 “For half of the trials participants were made to believe they were interacting with another person, while during the other half, they were told to be performing the experiment by themselves.”

“…they were told to be performing the experiment by themselves.” does not seem correct. “…they were told they would be performing the experiment by themselves.”?

p. 5 “resulting in a minimum sample size per group at n = 22.”

What are the groups you speak of here? Why did you not calculate an effect size for within subjects analyses, if that was your plan all along? It reads as if it was simply an error made at the time. If that is the case, it is understandable but to avoid confusion you could also simply say that you based your sample size on the effect size from Vogel et al. 2019 (and report this original effect size). The calculated required sample was 22 participants, then add your explanation that you deliberately overshot this estimate in order to account for changes. Crucially, you could skip the lengthy and slightly awkward explanation of why ANOVA based power analyses are more or less appropriate and just instead run a post hoc simulation based power estimation for the LMM with your final sample size and report how much power you ended up with.

p. 7 “All remaining contrasts were non-significant both before and after correction (active/pattern vs. passive/face: M = 5.56, SE = 14.57, t(39) = 0.382, p = 0.705, pbonf = 1.000; passive/face vs. active/face: M = 24.44, SE =15.32, t(39) = 1.595, p = 0.119, p pbonf = 0.712; passive/pattern vs. active/face: M = 27.14, SE = 16.75, t(39) = 1.620, p = .113, p pbonf = 0.680; passive/pattern vs. active/pattern: M = −2.87, SE = 15.01, t(39) = −0.191, p = 0.849, p pbonf = 1.000; passive/pattern vs. passive/face: M = 2.69, SE = 9.53, t(39) = 0.283, p = 0.779, p pbonf = 1.000).”

I think there are a couple of lonely ps before some pbonfs in this paragraph.

p.8 “as a possible limitation of flaw in our paradigm”

it should be or, not of, right?

That is all, all the best!

Annika Klaffehn

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Annika L. Klaffehn

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PLoS One. 2026 Jul 14;21(7):e0352510. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r004

Author response to Decision Letter 2

19 May 2026

Reviewer #2:

Dear Authors

We thank the reviewer for the positive feedback. We too believe the changes recommended in the last round of reviews have greatly improved the manuscript, particularly concerning clarity. We apologize for any errors that persisted after the first review and have now taken great care of correcting them.

P. 2 “However, while watching another person perform the task [6] or when performing the task with another person [5, 8, 16], TB is shorter than while performing the task alone. “

“TB is shorter” seems very weird to me and left me wondering whether you actually wanted to say that ratings became shorter. I guess the TB effect became smaller or decreased would be clearer.

We agree with the reviewer that our choice of phrasing was confusing. We have changed the sentence to:

“However, while watching another person perform the task [6] or when performing the task with another person [5, 8, 16], TB is smaller than while performing the task alone.”

P.3 “For one, TB has been thought to depend on the Sense of Agency –“

We have changed the sentence to:

“For one, TB has been theorized to depend on the Sense of Agency – […]”

“…they were told to be performing the experiment by themselves.” does not seem correct. “…they were told they would be performing the experiment by themselves.”?

We thank the reviewer for pointing this out. We agree that the original phrasing was unclear and have revised the sentence to:

“For half of the trials participants were made to believe they were interacting with another person, while during the other half, they were told they would perform the experiment by themselves.”

p. 5 “resulting in a minimum sample size per group at n = 22.”

We thank the reviewer for this helpful suggestion. We agree that the original wording regarding “groups” was imprecise in the context of a fully within-subject design and that the previous justification of the a-priori power analysis was unnecessarily extensive.

In the revised manuscript, we therefore simplified the description of the initial sample size estimation. As originally intended, we now state that the recruitment target was based on the effect size reported by Vogel et al. (2021) using a paired-samples framework appropriate for the original planning stage, and that we deliberately exceeded this estimate to account for modifications to the paradigm and analysis strategy. The revised section reads:

“Based on the effect sizes reported by Vogel et al. (2021) [9], we initially conducted an a priori power analysis in G*Power [31] for paired-samples comparisons with ⍺ = 0.05, desired power = 0.85, Cohen’s dz = 0.68, yielding a minimum target sample size of 22 participants. To account for modifications to the original paradigm and the use of linear mixed-effects modelling, we deliberately exceeded this estimate and recruited 40 participants (16 identifying as male, 24 identifying as female; mean age 28.2, SD 6.85).”

Importantly, following the reviewer’s recommendation, we additionally conducted a post hoc simulation-based power analysis for the final linear mixed-effects model using the observed fixed and random effect structure and the final sample size. We placed this analysis in the Results section and now report the achieved power for the relevant model effects. Because the Agency × Stimulus interaction constituted the primary effect of theoretical interest with regard to social hyperbinding, we specifically highlight that the achieved power for this interaction was moderate (1-β = .48). The section added at the end of the results section reads:

“To evaluate the sensitivity of the present design, we conducted a post-hoc simulation-based power analysis using jamovi’s pamlj module [40] for the final linear mixed-effects model using the observed fixed and random effect structure and the final sample size (N = 40; 8000 observations total). The simulation indicated excellent power for detecting the main effect of interval (1-β = 1.00). However, the power for the main effects of agency and stimulus was low (1-β = 0.14) to moderate (1-β = .51), respectively. The power for the stimulus × interval interaction (1-β = 0.74) and the agency × stimulus interaction – the primary effect of theoretical interest regarding social hyperbinding – was moderate (1-β = 0.48), while the power for the agency × interval interaction was low (1-β = .15). These findings suggest that although the present design was sufficiently sensitive to detect large interval-related effects, it had a reduced sensitivity for smaller agency-related interaction effects. Consequently, the absence of statistically significant evidence for social hyperbinding in the present study should be interpreted cautiously, as smaller interaction effects may have remained undetected.”

I think there are a couple of lonely ps before some pbonfs in this paragraph.

The lonely ps have been removed.

p.8 “as a possible limitation of flaw in our paradigm”

it should be or, not of, right?

The typeo has been corrected. Thank you for pointing this out.

Attachment

Submitted filename: 26-05-15_V5.2-rebuttal.docx

pone.0352510.s003.docx^{(21.6KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r005

Decision Letter 2

Elisa Scerrati, Elisa Scerrati, Elisa Scerrati

11 Jun 2026

Temporal Binding and Social Perception – a Replication Study

PONE-D-25-67312R2

Dear Dr. Vogel,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

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Elisa Scerrati

Academic Editor

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

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Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Congratulations on your interesting paper. All my concerns have been addressed, and I believe it is ready for publication.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Annika L. Klaffehn

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PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0352510.r006

Acceptance letter

Elisa Scerrati, Elisa Scerrati, Elisa Scerrati

PONE-D-25-67312R2

PLOS One

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Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

Attachment

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pone.0352510.s002.docx^{(31KB, docx)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: 26-05-15_V5.2-rebuttal.docx

pone.0352510.s003.docx^{(21.6KB, docx)}

Data Availability Statement

Experimental materials, data, and analysis files for all experiments are available on the OSF (osf.io/vpyd9).

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PERMALINK

Temporal binding and social perception – A replication study

David HV Vogel

Manuela Woschei

Mathis Jording

Peter H Weiss

Kai Vogeley

Roles

Abstract

1. Introduction

Fig 1. Block design for the experiment based on Vogel et al. (2021,2022).

2. Method

Fig 2. Exemplary trial event structure for passive/pattern trials (top row), and active/face trials (bottom row) as depicted in Vogel et al. (2021, 2022).

3. Results

Fig 3. Mean time estimates for 400ms durations (left) and 700ms durations (right).

4. Discussion

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

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Elisa Scerrati

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Author response to Decision Letter 1

Decision Letter 1

Elisa Scerrati

Elisa Scerrati

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Author response to Decision Letter 2

Decision Letter 2

Elisa Scerrati

Elisa Scerrati

Elisa Scerrati

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Acceptance letter

Elisa Scerrati

Elisa Scerrati

Elisa Scerrati

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Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

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