Intentional Binding in Automated Control Settings Figure 2. Typical sequence of events for one trial. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034075.g002 adapted command (indicated by a sound coupled to a green light). The operator merely observed. Each participant performed four blocks of trials, each block of trials corresponding to one level of automation. The blocks were tested in random order. Within each block of trials, participants experienced 9 trials (three for each Action/Effect delay tested, again in random order). Finally, at the end of each block of 9 trials, participants made an explicit judgement of agency, by verbally reporting how strongly they felt that they caused the manoeuvre to avoid conflict, using a scale from 0 (no causal involvement) to 3 (strong causal involvement). Results In this study, our primary concern is the relationship between level of automation and our two measures of sense of agency: the perceived duration of intervals between actions and effects and the explicit judgement of causal control. Temporal judgement Each participant made 3 temporal judgments for each combination of Automation Level and Action/Effect delay. Participants’ mean temporal judgments served as the primary units of analysis. We performed a 4* 3 ANOVA with Action/Effect delay (750, 1500, 2250 ms) and Automation level (FOC, AD-OIE, ADI-OE and FAC) as within subject factors. There was a significant main effect of Action/Effect delay, F(2,24) = 209.68; p,.01., gp2 = .95 (see Fig. 4). Post-hoc analysis revealed that the interval estimates increased monotonically with the actual interval: the longer the actual action delay was, the longer the action-effect interval was perceived (all ps,.01). These results indicate that participants were able to track the physical variation of the interval. More interestingly, there was also a significant main effect of Automation level, F(3,36) = 26.154; p,.01, gp2 = .69 (see Fig. 5). Post-hoc analysis revealed that interval estimates increased monotonically with the level of automation: the more the system Figure 3. Automation level and cognitive processes in our aircraft navigation task. The red text indicates functions performed by the human operator and black text indicates function performed automatically by the system. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0034075.g003 PLoS ONE | www.plosone.org 3 March 2012 | Volume 7 | Issue 3 | e34075