The salience of an agency experience influences its ability to improve memory.

Abstract

Previous work reported that having a strong sense of agency can enhance memory for acted-upon items: Memory enhancement is evident when there is a strong sense of agency, but not when there is only a weak sense of agency. However, because of the way trials are distributed across conditions in typical studies, it is often the case that a strong sense of agency may also be very salient because it is experienced only infrequently within the context of the experiment. In this study, we examined the importance of salience in determining the memory enhancement potential of a sense of agency. We found that a weak sense of agency, provided it is made salient by infrequent occurrence, can also produce an improvement in memory. This finding indicates that salience can play an important role in determining whether an agency-related memory effect is ultimately observed. More generally, this highlights the importance of taking into consideration the salience of an agency experience when discussing its ability to affect cognition.