title: The Sense of Agency as Tracking Control.
abstract: Does sense of agency (SoA) arise merely from action-outcome associations, or does an additional real-time process track each step along the chain? Tracking control predicts that deviant intermediate steps between action and outcome should reduce SoA. In two experiments, participants learned mappings between two finger actions and two tones. In later test blocks, actions triggered a robot hand moving either the same or a different finger, and also triggered tones, which were congruent or incongruent with the mapping. The perceived delay between actions and tones gave a proxy measure for SoA. Action-tone binding was stronger for congruent than incongruent tones, but only when the robot movement was also congruent. Congruent tones also had reduced N1 amplitudes, but again only when the robot movement was congruent. We suggest that SoA partly depends on a real-time tracking control mechanism, since deviant intermediate action of the robot reduced SoA over the tone.
authors.affiliation: Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group (CO3), Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences (CRCN), ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.|Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Emilie A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Caspar
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Desantis
authors.affiliation: University of Sussex, School of psychology, Brighton, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Zoltan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Dienes
authors.affiliation: Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group (CO3), Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences (CRCN), ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cleeremans
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London (UCL), London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Haggard
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D055724:Electrophysiological Phenomena; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D006225:Hand / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009068:Movement / Q000502:physiology*; D012371:Robotics; D055815:Young Adult