Abstract
Sense of agency (SoA), or the subjective feeling that “I am the agent controlling the object,” is essential for learning and enjoying object manipulation. Recently developed automatic control systems, such as the cruise control systems in autonomous vehicles, require less manual control from the manipulators. It has to date been impossible to completely relieve operators of the need for manual control in many automatic control systems developed for tool-using situations. Therefore, it is important to examine how to maintain SoA (illusorily) during an automatic control situation. We investigated the effects of two typical characteristics of everyday tool-use situations on SoA when braking a moving object with a keypress. These characteristics included the presence of a goal (e.g., in driving situations, the driver steps on the brake pedal to stop the car at an expected position) and the gradual emergence of the outcome (e.g., the driver steps on the brake pedal and the car usually slows down first and then stops). We conducted an experiment in which participants stopped a moving object and then rated their SoA for stopping the object. Participants were explicitly informed that the object would sometimes stop independently of their keypress. Results showed that both characteristics decreased SoA in the manual control situation but increased SoA in the automatic control situation. Thus, these characteristics could be useful for maintaining a sense of agency in automatic control situations.
Highlights
As people interact with their environment, their knowledge of how their own actions affect the environment often manifests itself as “sense of agency” (SoA) or the subjective feeling of controlling external events by means of their own actions (Haggard and Tsakiris, 2009; Haggard and Chambon, 2012)
These results indicate that the combination of goal-directed action and the gradual emergence of the outcome, i.e., tool-use characteristics, attenuated the decrement in Sense of agency (SoA) resulting from automation, the decrement was not wholly eliminated
This study focused on two characteristics of tool-use or object control, goal-directed action and the gradual emergence of the outcome, and examined the effect of these characteristics on the SoA in an automatic control situation
Summary
As people interact with their environment, their knowledge of how their own actions affect the environment often manifests itself as “sense of agency” (SoA) or the subjective feeling of controlling external events by means of their own actions (Haggard and Tsakiris, 2009; Haggard and Chambon, 2012). In the traditional explanation of SoA (e.g., Blakemore et al, 1998, 1999; Voss et al, 2006), a predicted state is generated from an efferent copy of one’s motor command and compared with the actual state of the controlled object. If these states match, SoA is felt; if they do not match, SoA is not produced (e.g., Franck et al, 2001; Farrer et al, 2008).
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