Perception of abrupt noise First question - sorry Cognitive Science is a closed book to me so I hope someone can give me an insight into this phenomenon.

We have a child's toy that is activated by clapping of the hands. To me, I always perceive the activation of the toy to take place a split second before I perceive the sound of the hand clap - even, perhaps especially, when it is me that is doing the hand clapping.

I recognise that this must be a perception issue because the sound has to travel, perhaps 12 times the distance to the toy compared to my ears, then be processed by the electronics before the sound of the toy reaches back to me. How is it possible that I hear the sound of the toy before the sound of the handclap?
Judging from your description I think it has to do with the predictability of a certain event (the activation of the toy in this case) after a certain action (the hand clapping), altering your perception of temporal order between the event and your action. David Eagleman has done some research on this suggesting that when one has the intention of generating a certain event that has a high probability to occur, this event can be perceived to happen earlier than the action that caused it. That maybe explains why it especially happens when you are the agent. At least that is what I got from reading this paper http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/research/papers/EaglemanHolcombeTiCS2002.pdf Feel free to correct me if you think my description is wrong.

Nevertheless, the field of time perception has generally revealed many illusions in human timing and if you are interested in more you can read the work of Benjamin Libet as well on time and conscious awareness http://www.amazon.com/Mind-Time-Consciousness-Perspectives-Neuroscience/dp/067401846X