Abstract
The sense of agency refers to the feeling that we are in control of our actions and, through them, of events in the outside world. Much research has focused on the importance of retrospectively matching predicted and actual action outcomes for a strong sense of agency. Yet, recent studies have revealed that a metacognitive signal about the fluency of action selection can prospectively inform our sense of agency. Fluent, or easy, action selection leads to a stronger sense of agency over action outcomes than dysfluent, or difficult, selection. Since these studies used subliminal priming to manipulate action selection, it remained unclear whether supraliminal stimuli affecting action selection would have similar effects.We used supraliminal flankers to manipulate action selection in response to a central target. Experiment 1 revealed that conflict in action selection, induced by incongruent flankers and targets, led to reduced agency ratings over an outcome that followed the participant's response, relative to neutral and congruent flanking conditions. Experiment 2 replicated this result, and extended it to free choice between alternative actions. Finally, Experiment 3 varied the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between flankers and target. Action selection performance varied with SOA. Agency ratings were always lower in incongruent than congruent trials, and this effect did not vary across SOAs. Sense of agency is influenced by a signal that tracks conflict in action selection, regardless of the visibility of stimuli inducing conflict, and even when the timing of the stimuli means that the conflict may not affect performance.
Highlights
The sense of agency refers to the feeling that we voluntarily control our actions and, through them, events in the outside world (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009)
Our results show that the appearance of incongruent flankers 100 ms after the target still affected the sense of agency, even though the action performed remained congruent with the first intention, which was presumably triggered by the target
Across the experiments reported here, the sense of agency was prospectively informed by monitoring the processes of action selection
Summary
The sense of agency refers to the feeling that we voluntarily control our actions and, through them, events in the outside world (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009). This involves establishing a link between our intentions and our actions, and between our actions and their external outcomes. Much research has focused on the second link, between actions and outcomes This has revealed an important signal that informs the sense of agency - the comparison between expected and actual action outcomes (Blakemore, Wolpert, & Frith, 2002; Wegner & Wheatley, 1999). While mismatch signalling partly relies on predictive processes, based on internal signals related to the action system (see Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Newen, 2008 for a review of comparator models), it is essentially retrospective since the action outcome must be known for the comparison to be made
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