The Role of Temporal Contingency and Integrity of Visual Inputs in the Sense of Agency: A Psychophysical Study.

Hiroaki Mizuhara,Peter Uhlhaas

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.635202

Abstract

The sense of agency is a subjective feeling that one's own actions drive action outcomes. Previous studies have focused primarily on the temporal contingency between actions and sensory inputs as a possible mechanism for the sense of agency. However, the contribution of the integrity of visual inputs has not been systematically addressed. In the current study, we developed a psychophysical task to examine the role of visual inputs as well as temporal contingencies toward the sense of agency. Specifically, participants were required to track a target on a sinusoidal curve on a computer screen. Visual integrity of sensory inputs was manipulated by gradually occluding a computer cursor, and participants were asked to report the sense of agency on a nine-point Likert scale. Temporal contingency was manipulated by varying the delay between finger movements on a touchpad and cursor movements. The results showed that the sense of agency was influenced by both visual integrity and temporal contingency. These results are discussed in the context of current models that have proposed that the sense of agency emerges from the comparison of visual inputs with motor commands.

Highlights

The sense of agency is the subjective feeling that one’s actions drive behavioral outcomes and it is crucial for discriminating between self and non-self
The results showed that both temporal contingency as well as the integrity of visual inputs diminished the sense of agency
The sense of agency was modulated by temporal contingency [F(2, 78) = 47.0, pGG< 0.0001, ηp2 = 0.17] and visual integrity [F(2, 78) = 22.8, pGG< 0.0001, ηp2 = 0.090] (Figure 2A)

Summary

Introduction

The sense of agency is the subjective feeling that one’s actions drive behavioral outcomes and it is crucial for discriminating between self and non-self. Intentional binding tasks examine the effects of a voluntary action on the time intervals by comparing to a baseline, which was, for example, an involuntary action induced by transcranial magnetic stimulation, or irrelevant passive sounds, suggesting a Visual Input and Sense of Agency relationship between intentional binding and volition (Haggard et al, 2002). Previous studies have highlighted the role of temporal contingencies (Moore et al, 2009), suggesting that intentional binding is sensitive to causal relationship between action and sensory inputs. These results support the comparator model of motor control (Haggard, 2005) in which the sense of agency is generated when the difference between motor predictions and the incoming visual inputs is decreased

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Results