Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 22, Issue 4, December 2013, Pages 1403-1411
Consciousness and Cognition

Priming of actions increases sense of control over unexpected outcomes

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2013.09.008Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • We assessed contributions of prospective and retrospective cues to sense of agency.

  • Action selection fluency and outcome monitoring both contributed to sense of agency.

  • Prospective cues boost sense of agency when outcomes are not as expected.

  • Selection fluency and retrospective cues seem to influence agency reciprocally.

Abstract

Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling that we are in control of our own actions and, through them, events in the outside world. SoA depends partly on retrospectively matching outcomes to expectations, and partly on prospective processes occurring prior to action, notably action selection.

To assess the relative contribution of these processes, we factorially varied subliminal priming of action selection and expectation of action outcomes. Both factors affected SoA, and there was also a significant interaction. Compatible action primes increased SoA more strongly for unexpected than expected outcomes. Outcome expectation had strong effects on SoA following incompatible action priming, but only weak effects following compatible action priming. Prospective and retrospective SoA may have distinct and complementary functions.

Keywords

Agency
Action selection
Action priming
Outcome expectation

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