Deceleration Assistance Mitigated the Trade-off Between Sense of Agency and Driving Performance

Feelings of responsibility and temporal binding: A comparison of two measures of the sense of agency

Temporal binding refers to a subjective shortening of the interval between an action and its perceptual consequences. Temporal binding has often been used by researchers to indirectly measure participants' sense of agency (SoA), or the subjective sense of causing something to happen. Other studies have proposed links between temporal binding and feelings of moral responsibility. The present study compared subjective interval estimates to feelings of responsibility in a between-subjects design (Exp 1) and a within-subjects design (Exp 2). Participants either estimated the interval between two events (two tones in the passive condition, or a keypress followed by a tone in active conditions) or rated their feeling of responsibility for the tone(s). Manipulations of participant involvement and choice impacted feelings of responsibility more than temporal estimates. Overall, the two dependent variables followed different patterns, suggesting subjective interval estimates may not be a reliable proxy for feelings of responsibility.

Cognitive load decreases the sense of agency during continuous action

The sense of agency that normally accompanies voluntary actions depends on a combination of sensory predictions and other inferences. For example, when people manipulate moving objects and rate their degree of control, control ratings are influenced by proximal correlations between motor commands and visual feedback as well as the overall success or failure of the action. The relative importance of sensory predictions vs. post hoc feedback may depend on the availability and perceived reliability of those cues, which is context dependent. The present study investigated how increasing cognitive load during a visuomotor tracking task influences the sense of agency, and whether cognitive load influences the extent to which control ratings depend on sensory predictions vs. post hoc feedback. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a dual task that involved tracking a moving target using a joystick while rehearsing 3, 5, or 7 digits. Control ratings decreased as memory set size increased, even though set size had no significant effect on objective tracking error. Experiment 3 replicated this finding while also manipulating the favorability of feedback presented after each trial. Control ratings were correlated with post hoc feedback, but there was no significant interaction between feedback and cognitive load. These results suggest that sensorimotor predictions, performance feedback, and availability of working memory resources can all influence sense of agency. The hypothesis that people rely more on post hoc feedback to rate control when they are distracted was not supported.

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.

Subjective Distance Estimates and Sense of Agency in Robotic Wheelchair Control

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to an individual’s awareness of their own actions. SoA studies seek to find objective indicators for the feeling of agency. These indicators, being related to the feeling of control, have practical application in vehicle design. However, they have not been investigated for actions related to the agent’s body movement inherent to steering a vehicle. In our study, participants operated a robotic wheelchair under three conditions: active control by a participant, direct control by the experimenter and remote control by the experimenter. In each trial, a participant drove the wheelchair until a sound signal occurred, after which they stopped the wheelchair and estimated the travelled distance. The subjective estimates were significantly greater when participants operated the wheelchair by themselves. This result contrasts with observations under static settings in previous studies. In an additional study on the electroencephalographic response to a sound presented at a random time after movement onset, the observed latencies in the N1 component implied that participants might have a higher sense of control when they drove the wheelchair. The proposed methodology might become useful to indirectly assess the degree of operator control of a vehicle, primarily in the field of rehabilitation technologies.