Attentional control and inferences of agency: Working memory load differentially modulates goal-based and prime-based agency experiences.
Previous research indicates that people can infer self-agency, the experience of causing outcomes as a result of one's own actions, in situations where information about action-outcomes is pre-activated through goal-setting or priming. We argue that goal-based agency inferences rely on attentional control that processes information about matches and mismatches between intended and actual outcomes. Prime-based inferences follow an automatic cognitive accessibility process that relies on matches between primed and actual information about outcomes. We tested an improved task for a better examination of goal-based vs. primed-based agency inferences, and examined the moderating effect of working memory load on both types of inferences. Findings of four studies showed that goal-based, but not prime-based agency inferences dwindled under working memory load. These findings suggest that goal-based (vs. primed-based) agency inferences indeed rely on attentional control, thus rendering goal-based agency inferences especially prone to conditions that modulate goal-directed control processes.
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. Electronic address: R.A.Renes@uu.nl.
Robert A
RA
Renes
Department of Psychiatry of the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Neeltje E M
NE
van Haren
Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Henk
H
Aarts
D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
Attentional control; Goals; Outcome priming; Self-agency; Working memory