A New Look at Sensory Attenuation

Abstract

The systematic association of an action that a person performs with its sensory effects is thought to attenuate that person’s perception of the effect of the action. However, whether learned sensorimotor contingencies truly affect perception, rather than just inducing a response bias, has yet to be determined. The experiment presented in this article comprised two parts: an action-effect association phase and a test phase, during which the actions’ perceptual effects were tested. During the association phase, specific actions (left-key and right-key presses) were associated with specific visual effects (tilted Gabor patches). In the test phase, participants’ left-key presses and right-key presses triggered the onset of a low-contrast tilted Gabor patch in 50% of trials (no stimulus was presented on the remaining 50% of trials). Participants were required to report the presence or absence of this tilted Gabor patch. Our results showed that participants’ sensitivity (d′) to the Gabor patches was reduced by 10% when the patches were triggered by the action they had previously been associated with. This finding indicates that a person’s action does not induce a response bias (c), but changes the perception (d′) of the learned action effect.