Distance modulates urgency to act and action awareness
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Peripersonal space (PPS) - the immediate space surrounding our body - is known to enhance perceptual and neural processes. However, whether PPS influences voluntary action initiation and its temporal awareness remains underexplored. In this study, we tested whether spatial proximity per se affects the initiation of voluntary actions and the temporal awareness of associated events - from decision to action execution. Using an adapted Libet clock paradigm within a virtual reality environment, participants were presented with a clock either within their PPS (Near) or outside it (Far). They were required to initiate spontaneous actions and either report the perceived timing of their decision to act, report the timing of their action execution, or make no report. Results showed that when participants were not required to estimate timings, they initiated their actions earlier when the Libet clock was within PPS compared to when it was outside PPS. This suggests that there is an urgency induced by spatial proximity, which may be reduced by cognitive demands. Additionally, when the clock was within PPS, participants perceived their action decision and execution as occurring earlier than when it was outside PPS. By revealing that spatial proximity objectively modulates action urgency and subjectively influences temporal awareness of actions, these findings disclose a critical role of PPS in voluntary decision-making and temporal awareness. These results highlight a previously overlooked role of distance in decision-making processes and call for further experiments to understand how proximity can shape our experience of agency and control over actions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".