Cultural background influences implicit but not explicit sense of agency for the production of musical tones

Explicit and implicit sense of agency in depersonalisation experiences

The sense of agency, the feeling of controlling one's bodily actions and the world is altered in Depersonalisation (DP), a condition that makes people feel detached from one's self and body. To investigate the link between depersonalisation and both implicit and explicit sense of agency, an online study was conducted using the influential Intentional Binding paradigm in a sample of non-clinical DP participants. The results did not reveal significant differences between individuals with low and high occurrences of DP experiences on the implicit and explicit sense of agency. However, participants with high occurrences of DP experiences showed a more time-sensitive explicit sense of agency and greater temporal distortions for short intervals in the absence of self-initiated motion. These results suggest that there is a discrepancy between implicit and explicit sense of agency in people with high levels of depersonalisation. Altogether, these findings call for further investigations of the key role of time perception on altered sense of self and agency in both non-clinical and clinical populations, to disentangle the mechanisms associated with the explicit and implicit sense of agency.

When time does not matter: cultures differ in their use of temporal cues to infer agency over action effects

Sense of agency (SoA) is the sense of having control over one's own actions and through them events in the outside world. Sometimes temporal cues, that is temporal contiguity between action and effect, or temporal expectation regarding the occurrence of the effect are used to infer whether one has agency over an effect. This has mainly been investigated in Western cultures. However, Western and Eastern cultures differ in their time concepts and thus their usage of temporal cues may also differ. We investigated whether Western and Eastern cultures (Austrian vs. Mongolian students) use temporal cues differently. Participants performed adaption blocks in which actions were followed by immediate (immediate effect group) or by delayed (delayed effect group) effects. In subsequent test blocks the action-effect delay was varied and participants' SoA over the effect was assessed. In Austrian students, the immediate effect group experienced more SoA for short action-effect delays, whereas the reverse was true for the delayed effect group. Thus, temporal expectation rather than temporal contiguity is used as predominant agency cue. In Mongolian students, SoA did not significantly differ between different action-effect delays in both groups, indicating that Mongolian students hardly rely on temporal cues. In conclusion, due to linear time concepts in Western cultures, the timing of an effect may be an important agency cue in Austrian students. However, due to cyclical time concepts in some Eastern cultures, it may be a less important agency cue in Mongolian students. Thus, the use of temporal agency cues is culture-dependent.

Depressive traits are associated with a reduced effect of choice on intentional binding

A sense of agency (SoA) over wilful actions is thought to be dependent on the level of choice and the nature of the outcome. In a preregistered study, we manipulated choice and valence of outcome to assess the relationship between SoA across the depression and psychosis continuum. Participants (N = 151) completed a Libet Clock task, in which they had either a free or forced choice to press one of two buttons and received either a rewarding or punishing outcome. Participants also completed questionnaires on depressive and psychosis-like traits. Rewarding outcomes increased intentional binding. The evidence favoured no effect of choice on average, but this was influenced by inter-individual differences. Individuals reporting more depressive traits had less of a difference in intentional binding between free and forced choice conditions. We show that implicit SoA is sensitive to outcome valence and the effect of choice differs across the depression continuum.

Morality in the flesh: on the link between bodily self-consciousness, moral identity and (dis)honest behaviour

The sense of owning a body (ownership) and controlling its actions (agency) are two main pillars of bodily self-consciousness (BSC). Although studies suggest that BSC signals and morality may be associated, whether such association has a positive or negative direction remains unclear. To investigate this issue, we conducted two pre-registered, online studies, in which a total of 1309 participants completed BSC- and morality-related questionnaires and undertook a task where they could cheat for monetary gain. We found that participants with high sense of ownership displayed high moral identity, which supports the notion that ownership is used to associate the self with positive characteristics. Moreover, high agency was associated with increased moral identity when sense of power is high. Results regarding deception are less clear, and might relate to the impact of COVID-19. Our results concerning moral identity may inspire policies that rely on changes of corporeal awareness to contrast immorality.

Morality in the flesh: on the link between bodily self-consciousness, moral identity and (dis)honest behaviour

The sense of owning a body (ownership) and controlling its actions (agency) are two main pillars of bodily self-consciousness (BSC). Although studies suggest that BSC signals and morality may be associated, whether such association has a positive or negative direction remains unclear. To investigate this issue, we conducted two pre-registered, online studies, in which a total of 1309 participants completed BSC- and morality-related questionnaires and undertook a task where they could cheat for monetary gain. We found that participants with high sense of ownership displayed high moral identity, which supports the notion that ownership is used to associate the self with positive characteristics. Moreover, high agency was associated with increased moral identity when sense of power is high. Results regarding deception are less clear, and might relate to the impact of COVID-19. Our results concerning moral identity may inspire policies that rely on changes of corporeal awareness to contrast immorality.

Morality in the flesh: on the link between bodily self-consciousness, moral identity and (dis)honest behaviour

The sense of owning a body (ownership) and controlling its actions (agency) are two main pillars of bodily self-consciousness (BSC). Although studies suggest that BSC signals and morality may be associated, whether such association has a positive or negative direction remains unclear. To investigate this issue, we conducted two pre-registered, online studies, in which a total of 1309 participants completed BSC- and morality-related questionnaires and undertook a task where they could cheat for monetary gain. We found that participants with high sense of ownership displayed high moral identity, which supports the notion that ownership is used to associate the self with positive characteristics. Moreover, high agency was associated with increased moral identity when sense of power is high. Results regarding deception are less clear, and might relate to the impact of COVID-19. Our results concerning moral identity may inspire policies that rely on changes of corporeal awareness to contrast immorality.

Mistakes strengthen the temporal binding effect in the context of goal-directed actions

Temporal binding is an illusion in which the temporal interval between two events appears compressed. In the context of intentional actions, this effect is observed as a compression of the perceived interval between these actions and their causal outcomes. This 'intentional binding effect' has been used to investigate the Sense of Agency, which is the experience of intentionally causing an outcome through volitional action. Intentional binding is reduced for negative outcomes such as error feedback, but the role of mistakes (e.g., errors of commission) for binding and agency has not been extensively studied. In our study, participants played a virtual game in which they attempted to 'splat' (hit) visual stimuli that looked like coloured bugs, using mouse clicks. On some trials, stimulus colours changed unpredictably immediately before actions were made, sometimes inducing mistakes. Actions were thus clearly identifiable as mistakes at the time of their onset before any outcome feedback had been provided. Participants reported shorter action-outcome intervals when stimuli changed, but only when this change caused a mistake according to the game's rules. This suggests that intentional binding is strengthened by errors of commission. We discuss how this effect may be accounted for by agency itself and via more general processes such as changes in arousal.

Motivation(s) from control: response-effect contingency and confirmation of sensorimotor predictions reinforce different levels of selection

Humans and other animals live in dynamic environments. To reliably manipulate the environment and attain their goals they would benefit from a constant modification of motor-responding based on responses' current effect on the current environment. It is argued that this is exactly what is achieved by a mechanism that reinforces responses which have led to accurate sensorimotor predictions. We further show that evaluations of a response's effectiveness can occur simultaneously, driven by at least two different processes, each relying on different statistical properties of the feedback and affecting a different level of responding. Specifically, we show the continuous effect of (a) a sensorimotor process sensitive only to the conditional probability of effects given that the agent acted on the environment (i.e., action-effects) and of (b) a more abstract judgement or inference that is also sensitive to the conditional probabilities of occurrence of feedback given no action by the agent (i.e., inaction-effects). The latter process seems to guide action selection (e.g., should I act?) while the former the manner of the action's execution. This study is the first to show that different evaluation processes of a response's effectiveness influence different levels of responding.

The Interplay Between Affective Processing and Sense of Agency During Action Regulation: A Review

Sense of agency is the feeling of being in control of one's actions and their perceivable effects. Most previous research identified cognitive or sensory determinants of agency experience. However, it has been proposed that sense of agency is also bound to the processing of affective information. For example, during goal-directed actions or instrumental learning we often rely on positive feedback (e.g., rewards) or negative feedback (e.g., error messages) to determine our level of control over the current task. Nevertheless, we still lack a scientific model which adequately explains the relation between affective processing and sense of agency. In this article, we review current empirical findings on how affective information modulates agency experience, and, conversely, how sense of agency changes the processing of affective action outcomes. Furthermore, we discuss in how far agency-related changes in affective processing might influence the ability to enact cognitive control and action regulation during goal-directed behavior. A preliminary model is presented for describing the interplay between sense of agency, affective processing, and action regulation. We propose that affective processing could play a role in mediating the influence between subjective sense of agency and the objective ability to regulate one's behavior. Thus, determining the interrelation between affective processing and sense of agency will help us to understand the potential mechanistic basis of agency experience, as well as its functional significance for goal-directed behavior.

Analysis of Selected Variants of DRD2 and ANKK1 Genes in Combat Athletes

The level of physical activity is conditioned by many different factors, including, among others, the personality traits of a person. Important is the fact that personality traits are a moderately heritable factor and on the basis of the analysis of several genes, various lifetime outcomes can be predicted. One of the most important pathways influencing personality traits is connected to the dopaminergic system; hence, we decided to analyze the DRD2 PROM. rs1799732, DRD2 rs1076560, DRD2 Tag1D rs1800498, DRD2 Ex8 rs6276, DRD2Tag1B rs1079597 and ANKK1 Tag1A rs180049. The research group included 258 male athletes (mean age = 26.02; SD = 8.30), whereas the control group was 284 healthy male volunteers matched for age (mean age = 22.89; SD = 4.78), both of Caucasian origin and without history of substance dependency or psychosis. Genomic DNA was extracted from venous blood using standard procedures. Genotyping was conducted with the real-time PCR method. Differences in the frequency of the DRD2Tag1B rs1079597 gene polymorphism were found between people practicing combat sports and the control group, and the DRD2 PROM. rs1799732, DRD2 rs1076560, DRD2 Tag1D rs1800498, DRD2 Ex8 rs6276, DRD2Tag1B rs1079597 and ANKK1 Tag1A rs1800497 genotypes and allele frequencies in the studied sample did not differ between the analyzed groups. Hence, we considered these polymorphic places as an interesting area for the further search for unambiguous associations between personality traits and attitude towards physical effort.

Effects of Occupational Fatigue on Cognitive Performance of Staff From a Train Operating Company: A Field Study

Background

Occupational fatigue is a key issue in the rail industry that can endanger staff, passenger, and train safety. There is a need to demonstrate the relationship between workload, fatigue, and performance among rail staff.

Objective

The present study, conducted in the workplace in realistic situations, integrating both subjective and objective measurements, aimed at demonstrating the relationship between workload, fatigue, and cognitive performance with a rail staff sample.

Methods

The “After-Effect” technique was applied in the current study. Online diaries and cognitive performance tasks were used to assess the fatigue, work experiences, and performance of rail staff before and after work on the first and last days of one working week.

Results

Reported fatigue was greater after work on both the first and last day of the working week. There were large individual differences in the change in fatigue and workload ratings. Analysis of covariance with age and the pre-work performance score as covariates and the post-work performance score as the dependent variable showed that high levels of fatigue were associated with impaired performance on both the visual search and logical reasoning tasks. Workload had fewer effects on performance than fatigue.

Conclusion

This field study provided evidence for the relationship between work-related fatigue and performance impairment. The findings show the need for future work on predicting fatigue-related performance decrements, and the necessity of providing interventions and support so that the risk to safety can be reduced.

Sense of Agency in Multi-Step Actions

In our daily lives, we frequently execute actions that require several steps to bring about the outcome. However, investigations on how the sense of agency—the sense of controlling our actions and their outcomes—evolves in multi-step actions are still lacking. The purpose of the present research is to fill this gap. In the present study, the participants executed one-step, two-step, and three-step actions in which one, two, or three keys had to be pressed consecutively to generate a tone. We used sensory attenuation as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Sensory attenuation means that self-produced sensory effects are perceived as less intense than externally generated effects. In the present experiment, sensory attenuation was measured in a psychophysical paradigm and increased in multi-step actions compared to the one-step action. We also asked the participants to explicitly rate the amount to which they felt that they had generated the tone. Ratings were highest in the one-step condition and dropped for multi-step actions, thus showing the opposite pattern of the sensory attenuation data. We assume that enhanced sensory attenuation in multi-step actions could be due to increased effort or more accurate sensorimotor predictions of action effects. The decrease in explicit ratings for multi-step actions might be attributed to reduced perception of causality.

When robots tell you what to do: Sense of agency in human- and robot-guided actions

The present study investigated the sense of agency (SoA) when actions were determined by another human vs. a humanoid robot as compared to when freely selected. Additionally, perceived robot-autonomy was manipulated via autonomous vs. non-autonomous descriptions of the robot. SoA was assessed by judgment of control ratings and intentional binding (i.e., perceived temporal attraction between voluntary actions and their outcomes). Participants performed free and instructed key presses that produced an auditory tone (Experiment-1) and visual stimuli conveying neutral, positive, or negative valence (Experiment-2). Binding and control ratings were greater in free compared to instructed actions, and comparable between human- and robot-instructed actions. Control ratings were higher for positive compared to neutral and negative outcomes, and positively correlated with ratings of how human-like the robot appeared. These results highlight the role of endogenous processing of action selection and provide preliminary insight into the SoA when actions are guided by artificial agents.

Environmental control and psychosis-relevant traits modulate the prospective sense of agency in non-clinical individuals

The sense of agency concerns the experience of being the source of one's own actions and their consequences. An altered sense of agency can occur due to task automation and in psychosis. We tested in a non-clinical sample the hypothesis that reducing voluntary task control diminishes intentional binding as an implicit indicator of the sense of agency, possibly interacting with psychosis-relevant personality traits. Agent-device interactions were manipulated obtaining positive-control (voluntary interaction), no-control (automation), and negative-control (device-commanded interaction) groups. The main results showed reduced prospective intentional binding (predictive coding of action consequences) in the no-control and negative-control groups, compared to the positive-control group. Psychosis-like experiences covaried positively with intentional binding in the no-control group, but negatively in the negative-control group. Moreover, positive-social traits were associated with increased intentional binding in the positive-control group. These findings demonstrate the interplay between environmental and individual differences variables in establishing the implicit sense of agency.

It Was Me: The Use of Sense of Agency Cues Differs Between Cultures

Sense of agency (SoA) is the sense of having control over one's own actions and through them events in the outside world. SoA may be estimated by integrating different agency cues. In the present study, we examined whether the use of different agency cues - action-effect congruency, temporal relation between action and effect, and affective valence of effects - differs between Eastern (Mongolian) and Western (Austrian) cultures. In a learning phase, participants learned to associate different actions (keypresses) with positive and negative action effects (smileys). In a test phase, participants performed the same keypresses. After different intervals positive and negative action effects, which were either congruent or incongruent with the previously acquired action-effect associations, were presented. In each trial participants were asked to rate how likely the action effect was caused by themselves or by the computer (authorship ratings). In both groups authorship ratings were higher for congruent compared to incongruent action effects and for positive compared to negative action effects. This indicates that action-effect congruency and affective valence of action effects modulate SoA. Further, in both groups the difference between positive and negative effects was higher with congruent effects than incongruent effects. This overadditive effect of action-effect congruency and affective valence might indicate that an integration of different agency cues takes place. Decreasing authorship ratings with increasing interval were observed in Austrians but not in Mongolians. For Mongolians, the temporal chronology of events might be less important when inferring causality. Therefore, information regarding the temporal occurrence of the effect might not be used as an agency cue in Mongolians. In conclusion, some agency cues might be similarly used in different cultures, but the use of others might be culture-dependent.

Dopamine and sense of agency: Determinants in personality and substance use

Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over one's own actions. The strength of this sense varies inter-individually. This means that people differ in their perception concerning the intensity of their intentions and actions. The current study aims to determine the factors influencing this sense of agency on a personality level. Furthermore, it gives insight into the correlative relation between the strength of the sense of agency and substance use. The study involved 210 participants who were tested for the experiment (intentional binding paradigm for sense of agency, hand paradigm for intentionality bias, questionnaires FAD-Plus, NI-20, substance use). Significant determinants in personality were narcissism (vulnerable subtype) and substance use (consumption in general beyond cannabis, and particularly for the substances cannabis, ecstasy, and cocaine). Both personality types were associated with a weaker sense of agency compared to controls. For both results, alterations in the dopaminergic system need to be discussed. The present results confirm prior hypotheses that dopamine seems to play a crucial role in perception of agency. Possibly a higher accessibility of dopamine increases sense of agency (hyper-binding), whereas a lower accessibility of dopamine decreases sense of agency (hypo-binding). A second aim of the study was to see whether there is a connection between sense of agency and intentionality bias. The perception of intention in others differs widely; some people tend to see arbitrary or accidental actions as unintentional, and others quickly label actions as 'intentional' although the information is not distinct for a categorization. This cognitive error is called intentionality bias. Results could not confirm a relationship between the two constructs-one's own intention and judging intention in others. This may be due to a lack of connection between the two constructs or to methodological aspects. Further directions and limitations are discussed.

Action Choice and Outcome Congruency Independently Affect Intentional Binding and Feeling of Control Judgments

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the subjective experience that one is in control of their actions and the consequences of these actions. The SoA is a complex phenomenon, influenced by a weighted combination of various prospective (pre-movement) and retrospective (post-movement) processes and factors related to action choice, action selection fluency, action-outcome associations and higher-level inferences. In the current study, we examined the effect of the congruency between actions and outcomes in a context where the choice-level of actions was varied from 1 to 4. The actions consisted of right, left, up and down key presses while the outcomes were visual representations of the actions (i.e., right, left, up and down-pointing arrowheads). Participants performed either an instructed action or freely selected an action among two, three, or four alternatives. Each action randomly produced either a congruent or an incongruent outcome, depending on the matching between the direction of the key press and the direction of the outcome arrowhead. Participants estimated the delay between their actions and the observed outcomes and reported their feeling of control (FoC) over the outcomes. Interval estimations were used as an indirect measure of the SoA to quantify the intentional binding effect, which refers to the perceived temporal attraction between voluntary actions and their outcomes. The results showed that both intentional binding and FoC were enhanced as the choice-level was increased from 1 to 4. Additionally, intentional binding and FoC over the outcomes were stronger when actions produced congruent compared to incongruent outcomes. These results provide additional evidence that both intentional binding and FoC are sensitive to the number of action alternatives and the congruency between actions and their outcomes. Importantly, the current study suggests that these prospective and retrospective cues might independently influence intentional binding and FoC judgments.

Eyes that bind us: Gaze leading induces an implicit sense of agency

Humans feel a sense of agency over the effects their motor system causes. This is the case for manual actions such as pushing buttons, kicking footballs, and all acts that affect the physical environment. We ask whether initiating joint attention - causing another person to follow our eye movement - can elicit an implicit sense of agency over this congruent gaze response. Eye movements themselves cannot directly affect the physical environment, but joint attention is an example of how eye movements can indirectly cause social outcomes. Here we show that leading the gaze of an on-screen face induces an underestimation of the temporal gap between action and consequence (Experiments 1 and 2). This underestimation effect, named 'temporal binding,' is thought to be a measure of an implicit sense of agency. Experiment 3 asked whether merely making an eye movement in a non-agentic, non-social context might also affect temporal estimation, and no reliable effects were detected, implying that inconsequential oculomotor acts do not reliably affect temporal estimations under these conditions. Together, these findings suggest that an implicit sense of agency is generated when initiating joint attention interactions. This is important for understanding how humans can efficiently detect and understand the social consequences of their actions.

The effects of freedom of choice in action selection on perceived mental effort and the sense of agency

Previous research showed that increasing the number of action alternatives enhances the sense of agency (SoA). Here, we investigated whether choice space could affect subjective judgments of mental effort experienced during action selection and examined the link between subjective effort and the SoA. Participants performed freely selected (among two, three, or four options) and instructed actions that produced pleasant or unpleasant tones. We obtained action-effect interval estimates to quantify intentional binding - the perceived interval compression between actions and outcomes and feeling of control (FoC) ratings. Additionally, participants reported the degree of mental effort they experienced during action selection. We found that both binding and FoC were systematically enhanced with increasing choice-level. Outcome valence did not influence binding, while FoC was stronger for pleasant than unpleasant outcomes. Finally, freely chosen actions were associated with low subjective effort and slow responses (i.e., higher reaction times), and instructed actions were associated with high effort and fast responses. Although the conditions that yielded the greatest and least subjective effort also yielded the greatest and least binding and FoC, there was no significant correlation between subjective effort and SoA measures. Overall, our results raise interesting questions about how agency may be influenced by response selection demands (i.e., indexed by speed of responding) and subjective mental effort. Our work also highlights the importance of understanding how subjective mental effort and response speed are related to popular notions of fluency in response selection.