Agency attribution: event-related potentials and outcome monitoring

Social influence and external feedback control in humans

This article aims to unravel the dynamics of social influence by examining the processes that occur when one person is the target of another's influence. We hypothesized that these processes are part of a feedback loop system in an individual. This loop involves the situation (input), a goal state (reference), a comparator, a selection mechanism, a feedback predictor, and an action (output). Each element can become the target of social influence, and different types of social influence can be classified and explained by how these elements are targeted. For instance, attempting to persuade another person with strong arguments targets the goal state of the affected individual, while obedience targets the selection mechanism, and violence targets the action. In summary, this article aims to categorize, order, and explain phenomena in social influence research using a feedback loop framework focusing on the influenced individual.

Vicarious ostracism reduces observers' sense of agency

Previous findings revealed that social ostracism reduces people's implicit sense of agency. Based on theoretical claims that observed behavior of others may be cognitively represented similarly to one's own behavior, we conducted two experiments to test whether people's own sense of agency can also be impaired by observed social exclusion of others. In Experiment 1, participants recalled episodes referring to vicarious ostracism or inclusion before completing a temporal interval estimation task to assess intentional binding effects (an established implicit measure of the sense of agency). In Experiment 2, participants immersed into a newly designed virtual Cyberball game, in which they witnessed a vicarious ostracism or inclusion scenario, before completing a Libet-style temporal estimation task and an agency questionnaire (an explicit measure of the sense of agency). The findings show, for the first time, that vicarious ostracism reduces both implicit and explicit measures of agency in observers.

What is new with Artificial Intelligence? Human–agent interactions through the lens of social agency

In this article, we suggest that the study of social interactions and the development of a “sense of agency” in joint action can help determine the content of relevant explanations to be implemented in artificial systems to make them “explainable.” The introduction of automated systems, and more broadly of Artificial Intelligence (AI), into many domains has profoundly changed the nature of human activity, as well as the subjective experience that agents have of their own actions and their consequences – an experience that is commonly referred to as sense of agency. We propose to examine the empirical evidence supporting this impact of automation on individuals’ sense of agency, and hence on measures as diverse as operator performance, system explicability and acceptability. Because of some of its key characteristics, AI occupies a special status in the artificial systems landscape. We suggest that this status prompts us to reconsider human–AI interactions in the light of human–human relations. We approach the study of joint actions in human social interactions to deduce what key features are necessary for the development of a reliable sense of agency in a social context and suggest that such framework can help define what constitutes a good explanation. Finally, we propose possible directions to improve human–AI interactions and, in particular, to restore the sense of agency of human operators, improve their confidence in the decisions made by artificial agents, and increase the acceptability of such agents.

Repeating patterns: Predictive processing suggests an aesthetic learning role of the basal ganglia in repetitive stereotyped behaviors

Recurrent, unvarying, and seemingly purposeless patterns of action and cognition are part of normal development, but also feature prominently in several neuropsychiatric conditions. Repetitive stereotyped behaviors (RSBs) can be viewed as exaggerated forms of learned habits and frequently correlate with alterations in motor, limbic, and associative basal ganglia circuits. However, it is still unclear how altered basal ganglia feedback signals actually relate to the phenomenological variability of RSBs. Why do behaviorally overlapping phenomena sometimes require different treatment approaches−for example, sensory shielding strategies versus exposure therapy for autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, respectively? Certain clues may be found in recent models of basal ganglia function that extend well beyond action selection and motivational control, and have implications for sensorimotor integration, prediction, learning under uncertainty, as well as aesthetic learning. In this paper, we systematically compare three exemplary conditions with basal ganglia involvement, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and autism spectrum conditions, to gain a new understanding of RSBs. We integrate clinical observations and neuroanatomical and neurophysiological alterations with accounts employing the predictive processing framework. Based on this review, we suggest that basal ganglia feedback plays a central role in preconditioning cortical networks to anticipate self-generated, movement-related perception. In this way, basal ganglia feedback appears ideally situated to adjust the salience of sensory signals through precision weighting of (external) new sensory information, relative to the precision of (internal) predictions based on prior generated models. Accordingly, behavioral policies may preferentially rely on new data versus existing knowledge, in a spectrum spanning between novelty and stability. RSBs may then represent compensatory or reactive responses, respectively, at the opposite ends of this spectrum. This view places an important role of aesthetic learning on basal ganglia feedback, may account for observed changes in creativity and aesthetic experience in basal ganglia disorders, is empirically testable, and may inform creative art therapies in conditions characterized by stereotyped behaviors.

Interactions among endogenous, exogenous, and agency-driven attentional selection mechanisms in interactive displays

Attentional selection is driven, in part, by a complex interplay between endogenous and exogenous cues. Recently, one's interactions with the physical world have also been shown to bias attention. Specifically, the sense of agency that arises when our actions cause predictable outcomes biases our attention toward those things which we control. We investigated how this agency-driven attentional bias interacts with simultaneously presented endogenous (words) and exogenous (color singletons) environmental cues. Participants controlled the movement of one object while others moved independently. In a subsequent search task, targets were either the previously controlled objects or not. Targets were also validly or invalidly cued. Both cue types influenced attention allocation. Endogenous cues and agency-driven attentional selection were independent and additive, indicating they are separable mechanisms of selection. In contrast, exogenous cues eliminated the effects of agency, indicating that perceptually salient environmental cues can override internally derived effects of agency. This is the first demonstration of a boundary condition on agency-driven selection.

Actions of a Shaken Heart: Interoception Interacts with Action Processing

In the present study, we investigated the modulatory influence of the unconscious, bodily arousal on motor-related embodied information. Specifically, we examined how the interoceptive prediction error interacts with the event-related potentials linked to action-effect processing. Participants were asked to perform a task with self-initiated or externally-triggered sounds while receiving synchronous or false auditory cardiac feedback. The results found that interaction of interoceptive manipulation and action-effect processing modulates the frontal subcomponent of the P3 response. During the synchronous cardiac feedback, the P3 response to self-initiated tones was enhanced. During the false cardiac feedback, the frontal cortical response was reversed. N1 and P2 components were affected by the interoceptive manipulation, but not by the interaction of interoception and action processing. These findings provide experimental support for the theoretical accounts of the interaction between interoception and action processing within a framework of predictive coding, manifested particularly in the higher stages of action processing.

The effect of military training on the sense of agency and outcome processing

Armed forces often rely on strict hierarchical organization, where people are required to follow orders. In two cross-sectional studies, we investigate whether or not working in a military context influences the sense of agency and outcome processing, and how different durations (junior cadets vs senior cadets) and types (cadets vs privates) of military experience may modulate these effects. Participants could administer painful electrical shocks to a ‘victim’ in exchange for money, either by their own free choice, or following orders of the experimenter. Results indicate that working in a strictly hierarchical structure may have a generalized negative impact on one’s own sense of agency and outcome processing by reducing it, even when participants could freely decide their action. However, trained officers showed an enhanced sense of agency and outcome processing. This study offers insights on the potential for training the sense of agency and outcome processing.

Working in military structures implies a reduction in individual autonomy, in which agents must comply with hierarchical orders. Here, the authors show that working within such a structure is associated with a reduced sense of agency and outcome processing for junior cadets, but this relationship is absent in trained officers.

Agency and responsibility over virtual movements controlled through different paradigms of brain-computer interface

KEY POINTS

Embodiment of a virtual body was induced and its movements were controlled by two different brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigms - one based on signals from sensorimotor versus one from visual cortical areas. BCI-control of movements engenders agency, but not equally for all paradigms. Cortical sensorimotor activation correlates with agency and responsibility. This has significant implications for neurological rehabilitation and neuroethics.

ABSTRACT

Agency is the attribution of an action to the self and is a prerequisite for experiencing responsibility over its consequences. Here we investigated agency and responsibility by studying the control of movements of an embodied avatar, via brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, in immersive virtual reality. After induction of virtual body ownership by visuomotor correlations, healthy participants performed a motor task with their virtual body. We compared the passive observation of the subject's 'own' virtual arm performing the task with (1) the control of the movement through activation of sensorimotor areas (motor imagery) and (2) the control of the movement through activation of visual areas (steady-state visually evoked potentials). The latter two conditions were carried out using a BCI and both shared the intention and the resulting action. We found that BCI-control of movements engenders the sense of agency, which is strongest for sensorimotor area activation. Furthermore, increased activity of sensorimotor areas, as measured using EEG, correlates with levels of agency and responsibility. We discuss the implications of these results for the neural basis of agency.

Illusory agency attribution to others performing actions similar to one's own

When people observe others performing actions similar to their own while dancing or playing musical instruments, they sometimes feel as if their actions were subsumed into others’ actions or others’ actions led their own actions. Many studies have been conducted to investigate agency attribution. However, these studies have mainly examined agency attribution in cases where people do not know the true agent. Few studies have focused on how people attribute agency to others despite knowing that they themselves are actual agents. This study investigates agency attribution to others performing actions similar to one’s own when one knows who the actual agent is. We evaluated agency attribution when participants manipulated a mouse to control a cursor while observing another person performing similar actions. Our findings demonstrated that participants could attribute agency to others despite knowing that they themselves were actual agents. We refer to this illusory sense as “illusory agency attribution to others.” We suggest that illusory agency attribution to others is determined by multiple factors including a bottom-up process with a subjective feeling of agency in addition to a top-down process with an interpretative judgement of agency.

Personal responsibility modulates neural representations of anticipatory and experienced pain

An individual's sense of personal responsibility is crucial for adaptive functioning in ever-changing social situations. This study investigated how the sense of personal responsibility affected the neural dynamics of anticipating one's own pain and another person's pain, using EEG. Participants played a cooperation game in which either the participant (self-context) or the confederate (other-context) received a mild electric shock whenever one of them erred. At the anticipatory stage of pain, feedback-related negativity (FRN) and P300 were sensitive to the degree of responsibility in both contexts. The FRN was more negative when the participant had full responsibility (only the participant had erred) than when the participant shared responsibility with the confederate (both had erred) or had no responsibility (only the confederate had erred), and shared responsibility elicited more negative FRN than no responsibility. Having no responsibility produced larger P300 amplitudes than having shared or full responsibility, whereas there was no significant difference in P300 amplitude between the shared responsibility and the full responsibility conditions. When the shock was delivered to the participants, the P2 was smaller when there was no responsibility than when there was shared or full responsibility. When participants observed the painful facial expressions of the confederates, the P300 was not sensitive to responsibility level. Our results suggest that responsibility level modulates FRN and P300 in anticipation of pain experienced by both self and others, reflecting the attentional and affective experiences in both pain- and empathy-related processes.

Agency modulates interactions with automation technologies

The increasing presence of automation between operators and automated systems tends to disrupt operators from action outcomes, leading them to leave the control loop. The theoretical framework of agency suggests that priming the operator about the system's upcoming behaviour could help restore an appropriate sense of control and increase user acceptance of what the system is doing. In a series of two experiments, we test whether providing information about what the system is about to do next leads to an increase in the level of user acceptance, concomitant with an increase in control and performance. Using an aircraft supervision task, we demonstrated the benefit of prime messages regarding system acceptance and performance. Taken together, our results indicate that the principles proposed by this framework could be used to improve human-machine interaction and maintain a high level of sense of control in supervisory tasks. Practitioner Summary: The out-of-the-loop performance problem is a major potential consequence of automation, leaving operators helpless to takeover automation in case of failure. Using an aircraft supervision task, the following article illustrates how the psychological approach of agency can help improving human-system interactions by designing more acceptable and more controllable automated interfaces.

The Brain's Reward Response Occurs Even Without Actual Reward!

What if the brain's response to reward occurs even when there is no reward? Wouldn't that be a further concern for people prone to problem gambling and other forms of addiction, like those related to eating? Electroencephalography was employed to investigate this possibility using probabilistic feedback manipulations and measures of known event-related potentials (ERPs) related to reward processing. We tested the hypothesis-that reward-based ERPs would occur even in the absence of a tangible reward and when manipulations on expectation are implicit. The well-known P300 response potential was a key focus, and was assessed in non-gambling volunteer undergraduates on a task involving experimentally-manipulated probabilities of positive or negative feedback comprising three trial types-80, 50, or 20% positive feedback. A feedback stimulus (F1) followed a guess response between two possible outcomes (implicit win/loss), and then a second feedback stimulus (F2) was presented to confirm an alleged 'win' or 'loss' (explicit win/loss). Results revealed that amplitude of the P300 in F1-locked data (implicit manipulation) was larger (more positive) on average for feedback outcomes that were manipulated to be less likely than expected. The effect is pronounced after increased time on task (later trials), even though the majority of participants were not explicitly aware of our probability manipulations. For the explicit effects in F2-locked data, no meaningful or significant effects were observed. These findings point to the existence of proposed success-response mechanisms that operate not only explicitly but also with implicit manipulations that do not involve any direct indication of a win or loss, and are not associated with tangible rewards. Thus, there seems to be a non-explicit form of perception (we call 'implicit') associated with an internal experience of wins/losses (in the absence of actual rewards or losses) that can be measured in associated brain processes. The potential significance of these findings is discussed in terms of implications for problem gambling.

Enhanced perceptual processing of self-generated motion: Evidence from steady-state visual evoked potentials

The sense of agency emerges when our voluntary actions produce anticipated or predictable outcomes in the external world. It remains unclear how the sense of control also influences our perception of the external world. The present study examined perceptual processing of self-generated motion versus non-self-generated motion using steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs). Participants continuously moved their finger on a touchpad to trigger the movements of two shapes (Experiment 1) or two groups of dots (Experiment 2) on a monitor. Degree of control was manipulated by varying the spatial relation between finger movement and stimulus trajectory across conditions. However, the velocity, onset time, and offset time of visual stimuli always corresponded to participants' finger movement. Stimuli flickered at a frequency of either 7.5 Hz or 10 Hz, thus SSVEPs of these frequencies and their harmonics provided a frequency-tagged measurement of perceptual processing. Participants triggered the motion of all stimuli simultaneously, but had greater levels of control over some stimuli than over others. Their task was to detect a brief colour change on the border(s) of one shape (Experiment 1) or of one group of dots (Experiment 2). Although control over shapes/dots was irrelevant to the visual detection task, we found stronger SSVEPs for stimuli that were under a high level of control, compared with the stimuli that were under a low level of control. Our results suggest that the spatial regularity between self-generated movements and visual input boosted the neural responses underlying perceptual processing. Our results support the preactivation account of sensory attenuation, suggesting that perceptual processing of self-generated events is enhanced rather than inhibited.

Control Changes the Way We Look at the World

The feeling of control is a fundamental aspect of human experience and accompanies our voluntary actions all the time. However, how the sense of control interacts with wider perception, cognition, and behavior remains poorly understood. This study focused on how controlling an external object influences the allocation of attention. Experiment 1 examined attention to an object that is under a different level of control from the others. Participants searched for a target among multiple distractors on screen. All the distractors were partially under the participant's control (50% control level), and the search target was either under more or less control than the distractors. The results showed that, against this background of partial control, visual attention was attracted to an object only if it was more controlled than other available objects and not if it was less controlled. Experiment 2 examined attention allocation in contexts of either perfect control or no control over most of the objects. Specifically, the distractors were under either perfect (100%) control or no (0%) control, and the search target had one of six levels of control varying from 0% to 100%. When differences in control between the distractors and the target were small, visual attention was now more strongly drawn to search targets that were less controlled than distractors, rather than more controlled, suggesting attention to objects over which one might be losing control. Experiment 3 studied the events of losing or gaining control as opposed to the states of having or not having control. ERP measures showed that P300 amplitude proportionally encoded the magnitude of both increases and decreases in degree of control. However, losing control had more marked effects on P170 and P300 than gaining an equivalent degree of control, indicating high priority for efficiently detecting failures of control. Overall, our results suggest that controlled objects preferentially attract attention in uncontrolled environments. However, once control has been registered, the brain becomes highly sensitive to subsequent loss of control. Our findings point toward careful perceptual monitoring of degree of one's own agentic control over external objects. We suggest that control has intrinsic cognitive value because perceptual systems are organized to detect it and, once it has been acquired, to maintain it.

Measurement of the Perception of Control during Continuous Movement using Electroencephalography

“Sense of control” refers to the subjective feeling of control over external events. Numerous neuropsychological studies have investigated the neural basis of the sense of control during action performance; however, most previous studies have focused on responses to a single discrete action outcome rather than real-time processing of action-outcome sequences. In the present study, we aimed to identify whether certain patterns of brain activation are associated with the perceived control during continuous movement. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) signals while participants continuously moved a right-handed mouse in an attempt to control multiple visual stimuli. When participants perceived a sense of control over the stimuli, we observed a positive potential approximately 550 ms after the onset of movement, while no similar potential was observed when participants reported a lack of control. The appearance of this potential was consistent with the time window of awareness of control in a behavioral test using the same task, and likely reflected the explicit allocation of attention to control. Moreover, we found that the alpha-mu rhythm, which is linked to sensorimotor processing, was significantly suppressed after participants came to a conclusion regarding the level of control, regardless of whether control or lack of control was perceived. In summary, our results suggest that the late positive potential after the onset of the movement and the suppression of alpha-mu rhythm can be used as markers of the perception of control during continuous action performance and feedback monitoring.

Action Experience and Action Discovery in Medicated Individuals with Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that markedly affects voluntary action. While regular dopamine treatment can help restore motor function, dopamine also influences cognitive portions of the action system. Previous studies have demonstrated that dopamine medication boosts action-effect associations, which are crucial for the discovery of new voluntary actions. In the present study, we investigated whether neural processes involved in the discovery of new actions are altered in PD participants on regular dopamine treatment, compared to healthy age-matched controls. We recorded brain electroencephalography (EEG) activity while PD patients and age-matched controls performed action discovery (AD) and action control tasks. We found that the novelty P3, a component normally present when there is uncertainty about the occurrence of the sensory effect, was enhanced in PD patients. However, AD was maintained in PD patients, and the novelty P3 demonstrated normal learning-related reductions. Crucially, we found that in PD patients the causal association between an action and its resulting sensory outcome did not modulate the amplitude of the feedback correct-related positivity (fCRP), an EEG component sensitive to the association between an action and its resulting effect. Collectively, these preliminary results suggest that the formation of long-term action-outcome representations may be maintained in PD patients on regular dopamine treatment, but the initial experience of action-effect association may be affected.

How does consciousness for action relate to attention for action?

The interesting target article by Morsella et al. addresses critical issues that impact our understanding of consciousness. It is surprising, however, to see no treatment of the relationship between attention and consciousness, particularly given available models. Whether olfaction is most suitable as a model system to study consciousness for action also seems questionable. These issues are elaborated in the present commentary.

The sense of agency during continuous action: performance is more important than action-feedback association

The sense of agency refers to the feeling that one is controlling events through one’s own behavior. This study examined how task performance and the delay of events influence one’s sense of agency during continuous action accompanied by a goal. The participants were instructed to direct a moving dot into a square as quickly as possible by pressing the left and right keys on a keyboard to control the direction in which the dot traveled. The interval between the key press and response of the dot (i.e., direction change) was manipulated to vary task difficulty. Moreover, in the assisted condition, the computer ignored participants’ erroneous commands, resulting in improved task performance but a weaker association between the participants’ commands and actual movements of the dot relative to the condition in which all of the participants’ commands were executed (i.e., self-control condition). The results showed that participants’ sense of agency increased with better performance in the assisted condition relative to the self-control condition, even though a large proportion of their commands were not executed. We concluded that, when the action-feedback association was uncertain, cognitive inference was more dominant relative to the process of comparing predicted and perceived information in the judgment of agency.

I control therefore I do: judgments of agency influence action selection

Our sense of being agents, that is of willingly controlling both our own bodies and the external environment is ubiquitous if thin. Empirical and theoretical work on this 'sense of agency' has documented motivational, cognitive and neural influences on implicit (out of awareness) and explicit (conscious) judgments of agency. For example, fluency of action selection processes has been recently shown to affect judgments of one's degree of control over an external event. However, it is an open question whether and how such judgments of agency act as input to other processes. In this study we demonstrate that the opposite relationship between action selection and judgment of agency also exists. Specifically, we show that manipulating one's objective control over the environment influences both the speed and the frequency of performing an action associated with that control. This pattern bears a striking resemblance to the effect that tangible rewards have on action selection and suggests that positive control feedback is rewarding to the organism, consequently affecting action selection. If further corroborated this 'reward from control' may explain everyday addictions such as prolonged engagement in arcade games and pathological behaviors, such as stereotypy.

A behavioral task for investigating action discovery, selection and switching: comparison between types of reinforcer

Action discovery and selection are critical cognitive processes that are understudied at the cellular and systems neuroscience levels. Presented here is a new rodent joystick task suitable to test these processes due to the range of action possibilities that can be learnt while performing the task. Rats learned to manipulate a joystick while progressing through task milestones that required increasing degrees of movement accuracy. In a switching phase designed to measure action discovery, rats were repeatedly required to discover new target positions to meet changing task demands. Behavior was compared using both food and electrical brain stimulation reward (BSR) of the substantia nigra as reinforcement. Rats reinforced with food and those with BSR performed similarly overall, although BSR-treated rats exhibited greater vigor in responding. In the switching phase, rats learnt new actions to adapt to changing task demands, reflecting action discovery processes. Because subjects are required to learn different goal-directed actions, this task could be employed in further investigations of the cellular mechanisms of action discovery and selection. Additionally, this task could be used to assess the behavioral flexibility impairments seen in conditions such as Parkinson's disease and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The versatility of the task will enable cross-species investigations of these impairments.