Better Controlled, Better Maintained: Sense of Agency Facilitates Working Memory

Abstract

The cognitive effects of sense of agency (SoA) attract increasing attention. It is unclear how SoA influences working memory (WM). In the present study, participants first moved several boxes. One of the boxes was more or less controllable than the majority. After boxes stopped moving, to-be-remembered items appeared. Memory performance and SoA over them were subsequently tested. In Experiments 1a and 1b, the majority of boxes, serving as context, were under low and high control respectively. To further examine whether the maintenance stage was influenced, the effect of selective encoding was minimized in Experiments 2a and 2b. Experiment 2b further eliminated the impact of agency judgments and tested the relationship among SoA, WM, and preference. Memory was better for items with strong SoA in the high and low control contexts. The effect partly stems from the modulation of the maintenance stage in WM, in which reward-based processes could be engaged.