Abstract

Sense of agency (SoA), the feeling of control over one’s own actions and their effects, is fundamental to goal-directed actions at the individual level and may constitute a cornerstone of everyday life, including cooperative behavior (i.e., goal sharing). Previous studies have demonstrated that goal sharing can activate the motor prediction of both agent’s action and partner’s action in joint-action tasks. Moreover, given that from an SoA perspective, predictive processes are an essential basis, there is a possibility that goal sharing may modulate SoA. However, the possibility for goal sharing to modulate SoA remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate whether goal sharing modulates the intentional binding (IB) effect (a method that can quantitatively measure SoA) of self-generated and observed partner’s actions and improves motor accuracy. Participants were required to stop a circular horizontal moving object by pressing a key when the object reaches the center of a target in a social situation. This task measured IB by having participants estimate the time interval between action and effect in several 100 milliseconds, with shorter time interval estimations indicating enhancement of SoA. Participants were randomly divided into 13 Cooperative groups (goal sharing) and 13 Independent groups (non-goal sharing). Cooperative groups were instructed to perform the task together, while Independent groups did so individually. Participants estimated the time interval between them by pressing the key and hearing the corresponding sound (Self-generated action) and the other person pressing the key and hearing the sound (Observed action). Our results indicated that goal sharing improved motor accuracy and enhanced both the IB of Self-generated and Observed actions compared to non-goal sharing. We suggest that SoA can be modulated by goal sharing in specific social contexts.

Highlights

  • A model of action awareness suggests that Sense of agency (SoA) arises through internal predictions made within a forward action model; this was first proposed as an internal model of motor control and subsequently considered as a model of SoA, according to which SoA is generated when the predicted effect of the action matches the actual effect [1,2,3,4,5,6]

  • This study aimed to investigate whether goal sharing modulates the intentional binding (IB) both self-generated and observed actions and improves motor accuracy

  • This study examined the influence of goal sharing on IB and motor accuracy

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Summary

Introduction

A model of action awareness suggests that SoA arises through internal predictions made within a forward action model; this was first proposed as an internal model of motor control and subsequently considered as a model of SoA, according to which SoA is generated when the predicted effect of the action matches the actual effect [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Kilner et al [7] suggested that observed goal-directed actions are processed using the forward model as selfgenerated goal-directed actions. The forward model may be useful in explaining the social aspects of SoA

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