Discrepancy between explicit judgement of agency and implicit feeling of agency: Implications for sense of agency and its disorders

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of authorship that “I am the one who is controlling external events through my own action”. A distinction between explicit judgement of agency and implicit feeling of agency has been proposed theoretically. However, there has not been sufficient experimental evidence to support this distinction. We have assessed separate explicit and implicit agency measures in the same population and investigated their relationships. Intentional binding task was employed as an implicit measure and self-other attribution task as an explicit measure, which are known to reflect clinical symptoms of disorders in the sense of agency. The results of the implicit measure and explicit measure were not correlated, suggesting dissociation of the explicit judgement of agency and the implicit feeling of agency.     

Sense of agency: Sensorimotor signals and social context are differentially weighed at implicit and explicit levels

Sense of agency (SoA) describes the experience of being the author of an action. Cue integration approaches divide SoA into an implicit level, mostly relying on prospective sensorimotor signals, and an explicit level, resulting from an integration of sensorimotor and contextual cues based on their reliability. Integration mechanisms at each level and the contribution of implicit to explicit SoA remain underspecified. In a task of movements with visual outcomes, we tested the effect of social context (contextual cue) and sensory prediction congruency (retrospective sensorimotor cue) over implicit (intentional binding) and explicit (verbal judgments) SoA. Our results suggest that prospective sensorimotor cues determine implicit SoA. At the explicit level, retrospective sensorimotor cues and contextual cues are partly integrated in an additive way, but contextual cues can also act as a heuristic if sensorimotor cues are highly unreliable. We also found no significant association between implicit and explicit SoA.     

Musical expertise affects the sense of agency: Intentional binding in expert pianists

Intentional Binding (IB), a subjective compression of the time interval between a voluntary action and its consequence, is an implicit measure of the sense of agency (the feeling of controlling one's own actions and their outcomes). The sense of agency is influenced by experience, e.g. learning, development, or learned contingency. The present study aimed at analyzing expertise – an expert competence acquired through experience alone – as a possible means to affect the sense of agency. We compared performance of expert pianists and non-musicians within the IB paradigm with two types of sensory outcome – a piano note and an electronic sound. Pianists showed significantly greater outcome binding and composite binding for both types of stimuli. Therefore, musical expertise might influence the sense of agency, possibly due to continuous exposure to action-outcome associations during the musical training. Additionally, such effect might extend beyond the specific expertise to the other types of auditory outcomes.     

Experience of agency and sense of responsibility

The experience of agency refers to the feeling that we control our own actions, and through them the outside world. In many contexts, sense of agency has strong implications for moral responsibility. For example, a sense of agency may allow people to choose between right and wrong actions, either immediately, or on subsequent occasions through learning about the moral consequences of their actions. In this study we investigate the relation between the experience of operant action, and responsibility for action outcomes using the intentional binding effect (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002) as an implicit, quantitative measure related to sense of agency. We studied the time at which people perceived simple manual actions and their effects, when these actions were embedded in scenarios where their actions had unpredictable consequences that could be either moral or merely economic. We found an enhanced binding of effects back towards the actions that caused them, implying an enhanced sense of agency, in moral compared to non-moral contexts. We also found stronger binding for effects with severely negative, compared to moderately negative, values. A tight temporal association between action and effect may be a low-level phenomenal marker of the sense of responsibility.     

The influence of performance on action-effect integration in sense of agency

Sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of being able to control an outcome through one’s own actions or will. Prior studies have shown that both sensory processing (e.g., comparisons between sensory feedbacks and predictions basing on one’s motor intentions) and high-level cognitive/constructive processes (e.g., inferences based on one’s performance or the consequences of one’s actions) contribute to judgments of sense of agency. However, it remains unclear how these two types of processes interact, which is important for clarifying the mechanisms underlying sense of agency. Thus, we examined whether performance-based inferences influence action-effect integration in sense of agency using a delay detection paradigm in two experiments. In both experiments, participants pressed left and right arrow keys to control the direction in which a moving dot was travelling. The dot’s response delay was manipulated randomly on 7 levels (0–480 ms) between the trials; for each trial, participants were asked to judge whether the dot response was delayed and to rate their level of agency over the dot. In Experiment 1, participants tried to direct the dot to reach a destination on the screen as quickly as possible. Furthermore, the computer assisted participants by ignoring erroneous commands for half of the trials (assisted condition), while in the other half, all of the participants’ commands were executed (self-control condition). In Experiment 2, participants directed the dot as they pleased (without a specific goal), but, in half of the trials, the computer randomly ignored 32% of their commands (disturbed condition) rather than assisted them. The results from the two experiments showed that performance enhanced action-effect integration. Specifically, when task performance was improved through the computer’s assistance in Experiment 1, delay detection was reduced in the 480-ms delay condition, despite the fact that 32% of participants’ commands were ignored. Conversely, when no feedback on task performance was given (as in Experiment 2), the participants reported greater delay when some of their commands were randomly ignored. Furthermore, the results of a logistic regression analysis showed that the threshold of delay detection was greater in the assisted condition than in the self-control condition in Experiment 1, which suggests a wider time window for action-effect integration. A multivariate analysis also revealed that assistance was related to reduced delay detection via task performance, while reduced delay detection was directly correlated with a better sense of agency. These results indicate an association between the implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency.     

Uncovering effects of self-control and stimulus-driven action selection on the sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to feelings of causing one’s own action and resulting effect. Previous research indicates that voluntary action selection is an important factor in shaping the sense of agency. Whereas the volitional nature of the sense of agency is well documented, the present study examined whether agency is modulated when action selection shifts from self-control to a more automatic stimulus-driven process. Seventy-two participants performed an auditory Simon task including congruent and incongruent trials to generate automatic stimulus-driven vs. more self-control driven action, respectively. Responses in the Simon task produced a tone and agency was assessed with the intentional binding task – an implicit measure of agency. Results showed a Simon effect and temporal binding effect. However, temporal binding was independent of congruency. These findings suggest that temporal binding, a window to the sense of agency, emerges for both automatic stimulus-driven actions and self-controlled actions.     

Unravelling intention: Distal intentions increase the subjective sense of agency

Experimental studies investigating the contribution of conscious intention to the generation of a sense of agency for one’s own actions tend to rely upon a narrow definition of intention. Often it is operationalized as the conscious sensation of wanting to move right before movement. Existing results and discussion are therefore missing crucial aspects of intentions, namely intention as the conscious sensation of wanting to move in advance of the movement. In the present experiment we used an intentional binding paradigm, in which we distinguished between immediate (proximal) intention, as usually investigated, and longer standing (distal) intention. The results showed that the binding effect was significantly enhanced for distal intentions compared to proximal intentions, indicating that the former leads to stronger sense of agency. Our finding provides empirical support for a crucial distinction between at least two types of intention when addressing the efficacy of conscious intentions.     

Power to the will: How exerting physical effort boosts the sense of agency

The sense of agency refers to the experience of being in control of one’s actions and their consequences. The 19th century French philosopher Maine de Biran proposed that the sensation of effort might provide an internal cue for distinguishing self-caused from other changes in the environment. The present study is the first to empirically test the philosophical idea that effort promotes self-agency. We used intentional binding, which refers to the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory consequences, as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Effort was manipulated independent of the primary task by requiring participants to pull stretch bands of varying resistance levels. We found that intentional binding was enhanced under conditions of increased effort. This suggests not only that the experience of effort directly contributes to the sense of agency, but also that the integration of effort as an agency cue is non-specific to the effort requirement of the action itself.     

Emotional valence,sense of agency and responsibility: A study using intentional binding

We investigated how the emotional valence of an action outcome influences the experience of control, in an intentional binding experiment. Voluntary actions were followed by emotionally positive or negative human vocalisations, or by neutral tones. We used mental chronometry to measure a retrospective component of sense of agency (SoA), triggered by the occurrence of the action outcome, and a prospective component, driven by the expectation that the outcome will occur. Positive outcomes enhanced the retrospective component of SoA, but only when both occurrence and the valence of the outcome were unexpected. When the valence of outcomes was blocked – and therefore predictable – we found a prospective component of SoA when neutral tones were expected but did not actually occur. This prospective binding was absent, and reversed, for positive and negative expected outcomes. Emotional expectation counteracts the prospective component of SoA, suggesting a distancing effect.     

The evolving sense of agency: Context recency and quality modulate the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes

Humans acquire a sense of agency through their interactions with the world and their sensory consequences. Previous studies have highlighted stable agency-related phenomena like intentional binding, which depend on both prospective, context-dependent and retrospective, outcome-dependent processes. In the current study, we investigated the interaction between prospective and retrospective processes underlying the adaptation of an ongoing sense of agency. The results showed that prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window of up to 20 prior events was independent of the nature of the ongoing event. By contrast, the characteristics of the ongoing event retrospectively influenced prospective intentional binding developed during a temporal window narrower than 6 prior events. These findings characterize the interaction between prospective and retrospective mechanisms as a fundamental process to continuously update the sense of agency through sensorimotor learning. High psychosis-like experience traits weakened this interaction, suggesting that reduced adaption to the context contributes to altered self-experience.     

Intentional binding coincides with explicit sense of agency

Sense of agency, a feeling of generating actions and events by oneself, stems from action–outcome congruence. An implicit marker of sense of agency is intentional binding, which is compression of subjective temporal interval between action and outcome. We investigated relationships between intentional binding and explicit sense of agency. Participants pressed a key triggering auditory (Experiment 1) or visual outcome (Experiment 2) that occurred after variable delays. In each trial, participants rated their agency over the outcome and estimated the keypress–outcome temporal interval. Results showed that delays decreased agency ratings and intentional binding. There was inter-individual correlation between sensitivities to outcome delay (i.e., regression slope) of agency rating and intentional binding in the auditory but not visual domain. Importantly, we found intra-individual correlations between agency rating and intentional binding on a trial-by-trial basis in both outcome modalities. These results suggest that intentional binding coincides with explicit sense of agency.     

Intentional binding as a marker of agency across the lifespan

The feeling of control over actions and their external effects is known as Sense of Agency (SoAg). People usually have a distinctive SoAg for events caused by their own actions. However, if the agent is a child or an older person, this feeling of being responsible for the consequences of an action may differ from what an adult would feel. The idea would be that children and elderly may have a reduced SoAg since their frontal lobes are developing or have started to loose their efficiency. The aim of this study was to elucidate whether the SoAg changes across lifespan, using the Intentional Binding (i.e., the temporal attraction between a voluntary action and its sensory consequence) as implicit measure. Data show that children and elderly are characterized by a reduced SoAg as compared to adults. These findings provide a fundamental step in the characterization of SoAg dynamics throughout individuals’ lifetime.     

Social exclusion reduces the sense of agency: Evidence from intentional binding

Social exclusion is known to induce an immediate threat to one’s perceived sense of control. The sense of agency is an important human experience, strongly associated with volitional action. Healthy participants perceive the temporal interval between a voluntary action and its effect to be shorter than the same interval when it separates an involuntary action and effect. This temporal illusion is known as intentional binding and is used experimentally to index the implicit sense of agency. The current study investigated whether activating memories of social exclusion alters intentional binding. Results show that action-effect interval estimates are significantly longer after remembering an episode of social exclusion than after remembering an episode of social inclusion, or a no priming baseline condition. This study is the first to demonstrate the link between feelings of social exclusion and the pre-reflective sense of agency.     

Outcome processing and the sense of agency

People can distinguish outcomes they cause from those they do not; that is, they are quite able to sense self-agency in outcomes. A well-received idea is that the sense of agency is produced by a comparison between a predicted outcome and the actual outcome that occurs. While research has generally focused on understanding predictive representations and the comparison process, less work has been done on the actual outcomes and, in particular, how these are perceived or apprehended. Here, we studied this issue. In two experiments, we found outcomes are continuously, as opposed to partially, sampled throughout their span. Specifically, we found that prediction-inconsistent signals embedded within otherwise prediction-consistent outcomes were able to influence agency ratings, and this was true whether the contrary signals were embedded early or late in the outcome.     

A reduction in the implicit sense of agency during adolescence compared to childhood and adulthood

Sense of agency (SoA), the fundamental feeling of control over our actions and their consequences, may show key developmental changes during adolescence. We examined SoA in childhood (9–10), mid-adolescence (13–14), late-adolescence (18–20) and adulthood (25-28) using two tasks (Libet Clock and Stream of Letters). SoA was implicitly indexed by intentional binding that reflects the agency effect on action-outcome temporal association. We found age effects on the sub-processes in both tasks. In the Libet Clock task, where performance was more reliable, we observed a U-shaped developmental trajectory of intentional binding suggesting an adolescent-specific reduction in the experience of control. This study provides evidence for the developmental effects on the implicit agency experience and suggests adolescence as a critical period. We discuss the possible implications of these findings.     

The relation between the sense of agency and the experience of flow

This article investigates the relation between people’s feelings of agency and their feelings of flow. In the dominant model describing how people are able to assess their own agency—the comparator model of agency—when the person’s intentions match perfectly to what happens, the discrepancy between intention and outcome is zero, and the person is thought to interpret this lack of discrepancy as being in control. The lack of perceived push back from the external world seems remarkably similar to the state that has been described as a state of flow. However, when we used a computer game paradigm to investigate the relation between people’s feelings of agency and their feelings of flow, we found a dissociation between these two states. Although these two states may, in some ways, seem to be similar, our data indicate that they are governed by different principles and phenomenology.     

Sense of agency for mental actions: Insights from a belief-based action-effect paradigm

A substantial body of research has converged on the idea that the sense of agency arises from the integration of multiple sources of information. In this study, we investigated whether a measurable sense of agency can be detected for mental actions, without the contribution of motor components. We used a fake action-effect paradigm, where participants were led to think that a motor action or a particular thought could trigger a sound. Results showed that the sense of agency, when measured through explicit reports, was of comparable strength for motor and mental actions. The intentional binding effect, a phenomenon typically associated with the experience of agency, was also observed for both motor and mental actions. Taken together, our results provide novel insights into the specific role of intentional cues in instantiating a sense of agency, even in the absence of motor signals.     

Illusion of sense of self-agency: discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences of actions modulates the sense of self-agency, but not the sense of self-ownership

It is proposed that knowledge of motor commands is used to distinguish self-generated sensation from externally generated sensation. In this paper, we show that the sense of self-agency, that is the sense that I am the one who is generating an action, largely depends on the degree of discrepancy resulting from comparison between the predicted and actual sensory feedback. In Experiment 1, the sense of self-agency was reduced when the presentation of the tone was unpredictable in terms of timing and its frequency, although in fact the tone was self-produced. In Experiment 2, the opposite case was found to occur. That is, participants experienced illusionary sense of self-agency when the externally generated sensations happened to match the prediction made by forward model. In Experiment 3, the sense of self-agency was reduced when there was a discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences, regardless of presence or absence of a discrepancy between the intended and actual consequences of actions. In all the experiments, a discrepancy between the predicted and actual feedback had no effects on sense of self-ownership, that is the sense that I am the one who is undergoing an experience. These results may suggest that both senses of self are mutually independent.     

Environmental control and psychosis-relevant traits modulate the prospective sense of agency in non-clinical individuals

The sense of agency concerns the experience of being the source of one’s own actions and their consequences. An altered sense of agency can occur due to task automation and in psychosis. We tested in a non-clinical sample the hypothesis that reducing voluntary task control diminishes intentional binding as an implicit indicator of the sense of agency, possibly interacting with psychosis-relevant personality traits. Agent-device interactions were manipulated obtaining positive-control (voluntary interaction), no-control (automation), and negative-control (device-commanded interaction) groups. The main results showed reduced prospective intentional binding (predictive coding of action consequences) in the no-control and negative-control groups, compared to the positive-control group. Psychosis-like experiences covaried positively with intentional binding in the no-control group, but negatively in the negative-control group. Moreover, positive-social traits were associated with increased intentional binding in the positive-control group. These findings demonstrate the interplay between environmental and individual differences variables in establishing the implicit sense of agency.     

The time windows of the sense of agency

The sense of agency depends on some internal cues that derive from action control, as well as external cues like contextual information and prior information (degree of contingency between an action and is effect). We assessed whether external agency cues are combined with internal agency cues to affect the sense of agency. In two experiments participants performed a movement (button press) that elicited, after a varying delay, an effect (ball appearing on a screen), and reported their sense of agency over the effect (full, partial or no-agency) while internal cues (premotor information) and external cues (contextual and prior information) were manipulated. We assessed the effect of agency cues on the delays at which the sense of agency varied. The delays were increased with premotor signals but were decreased with contextual information. These findings favour a model of integration of internal and external agency cues over time.