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Establishing causal beliefs by observing regularities between actions and events in the environment is a crucial part of goal-directed behavior. Sense of agency (SoA) describes the corresponding experience of generating and controlling actions and subsequent events. Investigating how SoA adapts to situational changes in action–effect contingency, we observed even singular disturbances of perfect action–effect contingencies to yield a striking impact on SoA formation. Moreover, we additionally included disturbances of regularity that are not directly linked to one's own actions. Doing so allowed us to investigate how SoA might be a concept that goes beyond own actions toward a more generalized, subjective representation of control regarding environmental events. Indeed, the present experiments establish that, while SoA is highly tuned toward action–effect relations, it is also sensitive to events that occur without one's own action contribution. SoA thus appears to be exceptionally sensitive to singular breakpoints of perfect control with agents disproportionally incorporating such events during SoA formation while at the same time building on a rich situation model. Public Significance Statement: Sense of agency (SoA) as the subjective experience of control over our actions and their effects is thought to be an integral and influential part of action decisions and action execution. To understand its formation in human agents, we need to understand how this subjective experience of control relates to actual environmental regularities, that is, the agent's objective control. Our results show that SoA is highly sensitive to environmental regularities, both directly and not directly linked to own actions, demonstrating that SoA is a concept that goes beyond own actions. Importantly, our results suggest that already singular instances of regularity disruption trigger strong reductions in explicit SoA. Altogether, our data showcase that while subjective experience of control is strongly influenced by actual control, both deviate in crucial aspects, and thus have to be distinguished in experimental procedure and terminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: An internal model deficit is considered to underlie developmental coordination disorder (DCD); thus, children with DCD have an altered sense of agency (SoA), which is associated with depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the perception of action-outcome regularity is present in early development, is involved in the generation of SoA, and has roles in adaptive motor learning and coordinated motor skills. However, perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity has not been examined in children with DCD. Methods: We investigated perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity in 6–15-year-old children with DCD and age- and sex-matched typically developing (TD) children. Both groups were assessed for coordinated motor skills with the Movement Assessment Battery for Children-2nd Edition, while the DCD group was assessed with the DCD Questionnaire, Social Communication Questionnaire, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder-Rating Scale, and Depression Self- Rating Scale for Children. Results: Perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity was significantly reduced in children with DCD. However, there was a significant correlation between perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity and age in DCD and TD children. Perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity was significantly lower in younger children with DCD than in younger and older TD children, but there were no significant differences between older children with DCD and younger and older TD children. Conclusion: The current results suggest that children with DCD have significantly reduced perceptual sensitivity to action-outcome regularity at younger ages, which may alter SoA and inhibit internal model development, thereby reducing motor skill coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Schizophrenia (SZ) is characterized by abnormalities in selfrepresentation, including a disturbed sense of agency (SoA). The continuous processing of sensory information concerning the internal state of the body (interoception) is argued to be fundamental to neural representations of the self. We, therefore, tested if aberrant interoception underpins disturbances in SoA in SZ, focusing on cardiac interoceptive signaling. Methods: Forty-two SZ and 29 non-clinical participants (healthy controls; HC) performed an intentional binding task tomeasure SoA during concurrent heartbeat recording. The effect of cardiac interoceptive signals on SoA was measured by the difference in intentional binding effect during systole and diastole. This measure was standardized based on the overall intentional binding effect to control for noncardiac factors, and then compared between SZ and HC. Results: Our study revealed a significant difference between SZ and HC groups, with opposite effects of cardiac systole on SoA. Specifically, cardiac systole disrupted SoA in SZ, contrasting with the enhanced SoA in HC. Across the SZ group, the extent to which SoA was disrupted by cardiac systole correlated significantly with a clinical proxy for symptom instability, namely the number of hospital admissions for hallucinations and delusions. Furthermore, the disruption was particularly observed in patients with severe hallucinations. Conclusions: This study revealed a disturbance in the impact of cardiac interoceptive signals on an implicit index of SoA in schizophrenia. This supports the notion that pathophysiological disruption of the central integration of interoceptive information increases vulnerability to disturbances in self-representation and the associated expression of schizophrenic symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of ownership and agency are two important aspects of the minimal self, but how self-perception is affected by social conditions remains unclear. Here, we studied how social inclusion or exclusion of participants in the course of a virtual Cyberball game would affect explicit judgments and implicit measures of ownership and agency (proprioceptive drift, skin conductance responses, and intentional binding, respectively) in a virtual hand illusion paradigm, in which a virtual hand moved in or out of sync with the participants' own hand. Results show that synchrony affected all four measures. More importantly, this effect interacted with social inclusion/exclusion in the Cyberball game for both ownership and agency measure, showing that social exclusion reduces perceived agency and ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ubiquitous presence of tactile information in our daily activities, studies of how we experience agency of our actions have rarely relied on manipulated visuo-tactile feedback. Instead, what is often manipulated are the distal (and arbitrarily associated) consequences of our actions. The few studies that did investigate whether tactile information contributes to the experience of agency have been limited to the binary assessment of tactile feedback about the outcome of an action being present or absent. Here, we went beyond the coarse comparison of agency with versus without tactile feedback and introduced instead an experimental manipulation where we could control the amount of mismatch between predictions and observations. Participants (N = 40) reached with their right hand toward a ridged plate with a specific orientation and saw online feedback that could match or differ from their action in one of three ways: the physical plate's orientation, the action's timing, or the hand's position in space. Absolute subjective ratings revealed that an increased mismatch in tactile information led to a diminished sense of agency, similar to what has been reported for spatial and temporal mismatches. Further, estimations of metacognitive efficiency revealed similar Mratios in identifying visuo-tactile violation predictions as compared to visuo-temporal violations (but lower than visuospatial). These findings emphasize the importance of tactile information in shaping our experience of acting voluntarily and show how this important component can be experimentally probed. Public Significance Statement: The sense of agency is the feeling that we are the authors of our actions. It is an essential aspect of the control we assert over our bodies and how we interact with the world around us. Despite the central role of touch in our daily activities, the role of tactile information in forming our sense of agency is often overlooked. In this project, we used an experimental approach that allowed us to compare the role of tactile information relative to two other sources of information that have been previously reported to affect our agency, namely, the timing of our actions and the position of our body in space. We provide evidence that tactile information is crucial for our subjective experience of agency and a tool to study this role further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of agency (SoA) describes the feeling of control over one's actions and their consequences. One proposed index of implicit SoA is temporal compression, which refers to the phenomenon that voluntary actions and their outcomes are perceived as closer in time than they actually are. The present study measured temporal compression in the social norm violation situation. In two experiments participants joined in an Ultimatum game (UG), in which they were presented with offers that varied in fairness and they could choose to accept or reject the offers by pressing buttons. A neutral sound would occur after their choices in the UG and the participants had to estimate the time interval between their button pressing and the occurrence of the sound, and EEG signals were recorded during the task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that rejecting unfair offers decreased the perceived interval between action and outcome compared to accepting fair offers, suggesting a higher level of SoA after rejecting unfair offers. Experiment 2 replicated these results and further revealed an attenuated N1 in response to the sound following rejections of unfairness. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of social norms in affecting people's behaviors and agency experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates players' sense of control over a game, referred to as the sense of agency (SoA). While prior research has addressed the importance of control in game interactions, understanding the factors that constitute players' SoA remains limited. Using a mixed methods approach, we conducted interviews (n = 18) and surveys (n = 654) to gain qualitative and quantitative insights into this unique perceptual phenomenon. Multidimensional scaling analysis revealed a two-dimensional space comprising five clusters that shape players' SoA. We then developed and tested a 12-item Game Sense of Agency questionnaire which, through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, measures four factors: Multisensory Presentation, Feedback Reasoning, Virtual Realism and Control Smoothness. This research identifies the multifaceted nature of players' SoA and offers practical suggestions for how it could be measured. The outcomes contribute an empirically-driven framework for understanding and evaluating the factors that influence players' SoA in games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by local–global factors, youth are mostly the architects who shape their societies. The youthscape in Palestine is shaped by the dynamics of asymmetrical power within challenging geopolitical conditions under the Israeli occupation. Amid individual variations, Palestinian youth struggle for a quality life under uncertainties. This study investigates the perception of everyday life among the youth (18–25 years) of Beit Hanina neighborhood in Jerusalem as they encounter Israeli colonial infrastructure. De Certeau’s theories of space and everyday life and Luhmann’s system differentiation theory are applied. This study qualitatively adopts a survey-based methodology to investigate the relationship between the youth experiences while crossing checkpoints. A conceptual framework is employed to triangulate space, time, and the youth experiences. Modes of resilience are analyzed through the intersectionality of emerging patterns of practices of everyday life and sense of agency to produce a new paradigm of opportunities. The current study clarifies how the youth negotiate their everyday life practices between their own modes of resilience and production of opportunities, thus reshaping the youthscape in East Jerusalem. This study contributes to the literature on everyday life of the youth, particularly within a colonial context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sense of Agency (SoA) refers to the individual's perception of control over actions and their subsequent impact on the external environment. SoA encompasses multiple dimensions, such as implicit/local and explicit/general, which can be quantitatively assessed through cognitive tasks and psychometric questionnaires, respectively. The explicit and general aspect of SoA is commonly evaluated using the Sense of Agency Scale (SoAS). This study's objective is to adapt and validate a Japanese version of the Tapal-SoAS. To achieve this, we distributed an online survey in three stages, gathering data from 8,237 Japanese participants aged between their 20s and 60s. Our analysis confirmed the bifactorial structure identified in the original study: the Sense of Positive Agency (SoPA) and the Sense of Negative Agency (SoNA). Metrics pertaining to test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity reached satisfactory thresholds. Furthermore, the two-factor models demonstrated suitable fit across various age cohorts. The Japanese version of the SoAS (J-SoAS) shows potential for cross-cultural comparisons of explicit and general SoA, particularly between Western and Eastern populations, and among distinct age groups, including young adults and the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivating question for this study is determining whether electrical muscle stimulation (EMS)-induced movements can extend the user's ability without reducing the sense of agency. Moreover, it is crucial to find the timing of the EMS application that is robust against individual differences and environmental changes. Previous studies have reported that the user-specific EMS-application timings, determined through explicit measures of sense of agency, would effectively shorten their reaction time in a push task while maintaining their sense of agency. However, no study has investigated EMS-application timings in relation to implicit measures of sense of agency. Intentional binding, an example of an implicit measure, refers to the phenomenon whereby the interval between an intentional action and the subsequent perceptual outcome is typically perceived to be shorter than the actual interval. By measuring this perceptual shift using a Libet clock, we have identified an EMS-application timing that accelerates the users' push action while maintaining their sense of agency. First, to conduct the EMS-application experiment while appropriately maintaining the intentional binding effect, we designed a new push task such that a pre-action, as the base timing of the EMS-application trigger, always occurs just before the push movement. (1) We showed the difference between the action-binding effect of EMS-induced involuntary movements and voluntary push movements. Subsequently, (2) we identified the EMS application timing that significantly shifted judgments of action tasks while accelerating voluntary movements. Additionally, (3) we demonstrated that the EMS application could accelerate user pushing movement while maintaining the sense of agency at this specific application time. The proposed EMS in the novel pushing setup was found to be robustly effective against individual and environmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile robots have many applications in the modern world. The autonomy of robots is increasing, but critical cases like search and rescue missions must involve the possibility of human intervention for ethical reasons and safety. To achieve effective human–robot interaction, the operator needs to have a sense of agency (SoA) over the activities of the robot. One possible way to increase one's SoA in remote control could be the use of VR technology. The remote control situation has some important features, so indicators of SoA need to be reproduced there independently. In our study, participants controlled a mobile robot using either a monitor or a VR-headset as an output device. In both cases, active control was contrasted with passive observation of the robot's movement. In each trial, participants estimated the distance traveled by the robot—a putative implicit indicator of SoA. A significant difference between subjective distance estimates was found in the active and passive conditions with the monitor, but not in the active and passive conditions with VR. The effect obtained in the monitor conditions suggests that distance estimates can be used as an implicit indicator of SoA in robot remote control. We believe that the lack of difference between the active and passive conditions in VR was caused by motion sickness due to a mismatch of visual and vestibular sensory cues, leading to a weakened SoA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Sense of agency (SoA) describes the feeling of control over one’s actions and their consequences. One proposed index of implicit SoA is temporal compression, which refers to the phenomenon that voluntary actions and their outcomes are perceived as closer in time than they actually are. The present study measured temporal compression in the social norm violation situation. In two experiments participants joined in an Ultimatum game (UG), in which they were presented with offers that varied in fairness and they could choose to accept or reject the offers by pressing buttons. A neutral sound would occur after their choices in the UG and the participants had to estimate the time interval between their button pressing and the occurrence of the sound, and EEG signals were recorded during the task. Experiment 1 demonstrated that rejecting unfair offers decreased the perceived interval between action and outcome compared to accepting fair offers, suggesting a higher level of SoA after rejecting unfair offers. Experiment 2 replicated these results and further revealed an attenuated N1 in response to the sound following rejections of unfairness. Taken together, these results highlight the importance of social norms in affecting people’s behaviors and agency experiences.

Abstract The face serves as a crucial cue for self-identification, while the sense of agency plays a significant role in determining our influence through actions in the environment. The current study investigates how self-identification through facial recognition may influence the perception of control via motion. We propose that self-identification might engender a belief in having control over one’s own face, leading to a more acute detection and greater emphasis on discrepancies between their actions and the sensory feedback in control judgments. We refer to the condition governed by the belief in having control as the exploitation mode. Conversely, when manipulating another individual’s face, the belief in personal control is absent. In such cases, individuals are likely to rely on the regularity between actions and sensory input for control judgments, exhibiting behaviors that are exploratory in nature to glean such information. This condition is termed the explorative mode. The study utilized a face-motion mixing paradigm, employing a deep generative model to enable participants to interact with either their own or another person’s face through facial and head movements. During the experiment, participants observed either their own face or someone else’s face (self-face vs. other-face) on the screen. The motion of the face was driven either purely by their own facial and head motion or by an average of the participant’s and the experimenter’s motion (full control vs. partial control). The results showed that participants reported a higher sense of agency over the other-face than the self-face, while their self-identification rating was significantly higher for the self-face. More importantly, controlling someone else’s face resulted in more movement diversity than controlling one’s own face. These findings support our exploration–exploitation theory: When participants had a strong belief in control triggered by the self-face, they became highly sensitive to any sensorimotor prediction errors, leading to a lower sense of agency. In contrast, when the belief of control was absent, the exploration mode triggered more explorative behaviors, allowing participants to efficiently gather information to establish a sense of agency.

Background Case Presentation Discussion Self‐disturbance has been considered as a core symptomatology of schizophrenia and its emergence from the prodromal phase makes it a crucial target for early detection and intervention in schizophrenia. Currently, the clinical assessment of self‐disturbance relies on the self‐report of patients, and clinicians have no diagnostic tools in clinical practice. Identifying the neural substrate of self‐disturbance would be of great clinical value by shedding light on the core dimension of schizophrenia.We first introduce an adolescent patient who initially presented self‐disturbance, and clinically detectable hypoperfusion in angular gyrus (AG) was observed when early psychosis was suspected. Interestingly, the hypoperfusion in AG may correspond to improvement and exacerbation of self‐disturbance. This clinical observation led us to pursue the relationship between the decreased blood flow in the AG and self‐disturbance. Among 15 cases with suspected early psychosis in which single photon emission computed tomography was performed to exclude organic factors, we found additional 5 cases, including one prodromal patient, showing hypoperfusion in the AG and self‐disturbance with significant correlation (r = 0.79, p = 0.00025).The self‐disturbance has been interpreted as a reflection of disturbance of the “Sense of Agency”, the ability to attribute their action and/or thoughts to themselves. AG has been shown to play a pivotal role in the sense of agency. These cases suggest that the hypoperfusion in AG associated with the disruption in the sense of agency would be an early clinical sign of schizophrenia. Further longitudinal studies are needed to test this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study investigated the effect of social feedback on the experiences of our actions and the outcomes (e.g. temporal binding between an action and its outcome, reflecting individuals' causal beliefs modulated by their agency judgments). In Experiment 1a, participants freely decided (voluntary action) their action timing to cause an outcome, which was followed by social feedback. A larger temporal binding (TB) following negative vs. positive events was found. This effect appeared neither in the random context where the causal belief between the action and outcome was absent (Experiment 1b) nor in the involuntary action context where participants' action timing was instructed (Experiment 1c). Experiments 2a and 2b examined the effect when the action-outcome was occluded, including reversing the order of outcome and feedback in Experiment 2b. Experiments 3a and 3b investigated the effect with only social feedback or only action-outcome presented. Results revealed that the effect found in Experiment 1 was driven by social feedback and independent of the availability of the action-outcome and the position of social feedback. Our findings demonstrate a stronger temporal integration of the action and its outcome following negative social feedback, reflecting fluctuations in sense of agency when faced with social feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of controlling one's actions and their effects on the external environment. Here, we tested how the physiological process of aging affects the agency experience by taking advantage of a validated ecological experimental paradigm and exploring the different dimensions of agency. We tested 60 young and older adults during active and passive movements, causing, after a variable time delay, an external sensorial event. We collected overt agency judgments (i.e., explicit agency dimension), and we measured the perceived compression of the time interval between the active/passive movements and outcomes (to quantify the intentional binding phenomenon, an implicit index of agency). Our results indicate that the sense of agency significantly changes across the adult life span, with older participants exhibiting a reduced sense of agency, both at the explicit and implicit level. Crucially, the temporal dimension of the action outcome did not affect their agency experience. We suggest that elderly adults are more reliant on internal predictions, making them less sensitive to cognitive biases and external manipulations. We discuss these results in the domain of neurocognitive models of motor control, with reference to how aging affects the weighting process of predictive and sensory signals for efficient sensorimotor integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construct of sense of agency (SoA) has proven useful for understanding mechanisms underlying obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) phenomenology, especially in explaining the apparent dissociation in OCD between actual and perceived control over one's actions. Paradoxically, people with OCD appear to experience both diminished SoA (feeling unable to control their actions) and inflated SoA (having "magical" control over events). The present review investigated the extent to which the SoA is distorted in OCD, in terms of both implicit (ie, inferred from correlates and outcomes of voluntary actions) and explicit (ie, subjective judgment of one's control over an outcome) measures of SoA. Our search resulted in 15 studies that met the criteria for inclusion in a meta-analysis, where we also examined the potential moderating effects of the type of measure (explicit versus implicit) and of the actual control participants had over the outcome. We found that participants with OCD or with high levels of OCD symptoms show lower implicit measures of SoA and at the same time tend to overestimate their control in situations where they do not actually have it. Together, these findings support the hypothesized dissociation in OCD between actual and perceived control over one's actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency varies as a function of arousal in negative emotional contexts. As yet, it is unknown whether the same is true for positive affect, and how inter-individual characteristics might predict these effects. Temporal binding, an implicit measure of the sense of agency, was measured in 59 participants before and after watching either an emotionally neutral film clip or a positive film clip with high or low arousal. Analyses included participants' individual differences in subjective affective ratings, physiological arousal (pupillometry, skin conductance, heart rate), striatal dopamine levels via eye blink rates, and psychopathy. Linear mixed models showed that sexual arousal decreased temporal binding whereas calm pleasure had no facilitation effect on binding. Striatal dopamine levels were positively linked whereas subjective and physiological arousal may be negatively associated with binding towards actions. Psychopathic traits reduced the effect of high arousal on binding towards actions. These results provide evidence that individual differences influence the extent to which the temporal binding is affected by high arousing states with positive valence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant issues in Human-Machine Interaction relates to how much autonomy delegates to automation and whether this could degrade the human perception of control, referred to as Sense of Agency. In this study, the What-Whether-When model of intentional action was used to look for variations in the Sense of Agency by measuring the Intentional Binding effect when the human is told either what action to perform or whether to act or when to act. Participants were asked to reproduce the time interval between a keypress and an acoustic tone (delivered at different time intervals). In Experiment 1, this action could be entirely voluntary or fully constrained by the computer. In Experiment 2, the computer constrained only one decision component at a time (either what, whether, or when). Experiment 1 indicates that Intentional Binding is increased for voluntary actions. Results from Experiment 2 suggest that selecting what to do, whether, and when to act have different effects, with the Sense of Agency being degraded when participants were told what action to perform and whether to act. Further, results show the presence of a specific window of opportunity needed for the Sense of Agency to develop for each constraint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contributions collected in this special issue explore the phenomenology of joint action from a broad range of different disciplinary and methodological angles, including philosophical investigation (both in the analytic and the phenomenological tradition), computational modeling, experimental study, game theory, and developmental psychology. They also vastly expand the range of discussed cases beyond the standard examples of house-painting and sauce-cooking, addressing, for example, collective musical improvisations, dancing, work at the Diversity and Equity office of a university, and historical examples of collective violence such as the revolutionary Terror in France and the Nazis. In our introduction to this special issue, we group the contributions into three thematic areas – 1) the phenomenological fine-structure of joint action, 2) underlying mechanisms for joint action and 3) phenomenal preconditions for joint action. The first theme is discussed under a number of issues – a) components of the phenomenology of joint action, b) the I and the we in joint action, c) the effect of group size, structure and nature on the phenomenology of joint action and d) how do phenomenal relate to normative aspects of joint action? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of research on human augmentation, multiple bodies are used in a virtual environment. For example, a study on multiple partial body parts has been conducted using up to 64 hands and showed that multiple hands reduced the distance traveled by one hand. However, body perception has yet to be verified. In this study, we investigated how body perception changes when nine hands, partial bodies, are moved synchronously in a virtual environment, compared to a single hand. In addition, we examined whether the sense of body ownership for all nine hands was elicited simultaneously or whether it was elicited for some of the hands while switching between them. Participants performed a reaching task using one or nine hands presented in a virtual environment. After the reaching task, a threat stimulus was given, and hand movements in response to the threat were measured. After completion of each condition, the subjective sense of body ownership and sense of agency was investigated using a Likert scale. The results indicated that users felt the sense of body ownership of several hands for the nine hands and manipulated them by switching their attention to multiple bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intentional binding refers to the subjective temporal compression between a voluntary action and its subsequent sensory outcome. Despite some studies challenging the link between temporal compression and intentional action, intentional binding is still widely used as an implicit measure for the sense of agency. The debate remains unsettled primarily because the experimental conditions used in previous studies were confounded with various alternative causes for temporal compression, and action intention has not yet been tested comprehensively against all potential alternative causes in a single study. Here, we solve this puzzle by jointly comparing participants' estimates of the interval between three types of triggering events with comparable predictability—voluntary movement, passive movement, and external sensory event—and an external sensory outcome (auditory or visual across experiments). The results failed to show intentional binding, that is, no shorter interval estimation for the voluntary than the passive movement conditions. Instead, we observed temporal (but not intentional) binding when comparing both movement conditions with the external sensory condition. Thus, temporal binding appears to originate from sensory integration and temporal prediction, not from action intention. As such, these findings underscore the need to reconsider the use of "intentional binding" as a reliable proxy of the sense of agency. Public Significance Statement: When we press a light switch and observe a bulb lightening, we experience a sense of agency (SoA), a feeling of control over these events. We often perceive the temporal interval between our voluntary action and its consequence as shorter compared to the same interval between two events we are not involved. Such temporal binding has commonly been taken as a measure of the SoA. However, our study reveals that voluntary actions are neither necessary nor sufficient for temporal binding. Instead, temporal binding relies on predicting and integrating information. The SoA can be disturbed in various psychiatric disorders, and its brain mechanisms are currently being actively explored. Our study urges amending how it is measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

United agency refers to a sense of ‘acting as one’ that sometimes occurs when people engage in joint actions such as group music-making, dancing, and team sports. First-hand accounts of united agency have been reported in a variety of settings, but there exists little systematic evidence regarding when and why the sense of united agency arises. The current study addressed this gap using an online survey in which participants reported general information about their experiences of united agency as well as detailed descriptions of a single memorable experience. Most participants reported experiencing united agency at least occasionally, and those scoring higher on extraversion, agreeableness, and cognitive empathy experienced it more frequently. Memorable experiences of united agency were reported more often in joint actions characterized by synchronous or highly rhythmic coordination, salient shared goals, close or long-term relationships among co-performers, and small to medium group sizes. United agency was often accompanied by positive affect, feelings of alignment and social connection with co-performers, a sense of empowerment, and heightened attention. Together, these findings elucidate the individual characteristics and joint action features that facilitate united agency, shed light on its positive social and emotional consequences, and suggest important avenues for further work investigating its underlying mechanisms.

The motivating question for this study is determining whether electrical muscle stimulation (EMS)-induced movements can extend the user’s ability without reducing the sense of agency. Moreover, it is crucial to find the timing of the EMS application that is robust against individual differences and environmental changes. Previous studies have reported that the user-specific EMS-application timings, determined through explicit measures of sense of agency, would effectively shorten their reaction time in a push task while maintaining their sense of agency. However, no study has investigated EMS-application timings in relation to implicit measures of sense of agency. Intentional binding, an example of an implicit measure, refers to the phenomenon whereby the interval between an intentional action and the subsequent perceptual outcome is typically perceived to be shorter than the actual interval. By measuring this perceptual shift using a Libet clock, we have identified an EMS-application timing that accelerates the users’ push action while maintaining their sense of agency. First, to conduct the EMS-application experiment while appropriately maintaining the intentional binding effect, we designed a new push task such that a pre-action, as the base timing of the EMS-application trigger, always occurs just before the push movement. (1) We showed the difference between the action-binding effect of EMS-induced involuntary movements and voluntary push movements. Subsequently, (2) we identified the EMS application timing that significantly shifted judgments of action tasks while accelerating voluntary movements. Additionally, (3) we demonstrated that the EMS application could accelerate user pushing movement while maintaining the sense of agency at this specific application time. The proposed EMS in the novel pushing setup was found to be robustly effective against individual and environmental changes.

Abstract Background Sensory reafferents are crucial to correct our posture and movements, both reflexively and in a cognitively driven manner. They are also integral to developing and maintaining a sense of agency for our actions. In cases of compromised reafferents, such as for persons with amputated or congenitally missing limbs, or diseases of the peripheral and central nervous systems, augmented sensory feedback therefore has the potential for a strong, neurorehabilitative impact. We here developed an untethered vibrotactile garment that provides walking-related sensory feedback remapped non-invasively to the wearer’s back. Using the so-called FeetBack system, we investigated if healthy individuals perceive synchronous remapped feedback as corresponding to their own movement (motor awareness) and how temporal delays in tactile locomotor feedback affect both motor awareness and walking characteristics (adaptation). Methods We designed the system to remap somatosensory information from the foot-soles of healthy participants (N = 29), using vibrotactile apparent movement, to two linear arrays of vibrators mounted ipsilaterally on the back. This mimics the translation of the centre-of-mass over each foot during stance-phase. The intervention included trials with real-time or delayed feedback, resulting in a total of 120 trials and approximately 750 step-cycles, i.e. 1500 steps, per participant. Based on previous work, experimental delays ranged from 0ms to 1500ms to include up to a full step-cycle (baseline stride-time: µ = 1144 ± 9ms, range 986-1379ms). After each trial participants were asked to report their motor awareness. Results Participants reported high correspondence between their movement and the remapped feedback for real-time trials (85 ± 3%, µ ± σ), and lowest correspondence for trials with left-right reversed feedback (22 ± 6% at 600ms delay). Participants further reported high correspondence of trials delayed by a full gait-cycle (78 ± 4% at 1200ms delay), such that the modulation of motor awareness is best expressed as a sinusoidal relationship reflecting the phase-shifts between actual and remapped tactile feedback (cos model: 38% reduction of residual sum of squares (RSS) compared to linear fit, p

Abstract To investigate the mechanisms and boundary conditions of social media upward comparison on adolescents’ learning engagement, this study utilized two separate approaches. In research 1, a convenience sampling method was employed to conduct a questionnaire survey among 609 adolescents. The aim was to explore the influence of social media’s upward comparative tendency on learning engagement. In research 2, real social media platforms were utilized to select short videos as experimental materials. These materials were used to manipulate instantaneous social media upward comparison and examine its impact on learning engagement. The research 1’s result indicated that the mediating effect of the sense of agency was significant, as well as the moderating effect of growth mindset. However, the mediating effect of positive-negative emotions was found to be insignificant.Regarding instantaneous social media upward comparison and learning engagement, positive and negative emotions were found to play a complete mediating role. However, the mediating role of agency and the moderating role of growth mindset were not significant.This study offers practical insights for educators, enabling them to develop a correct understanding and effectively regulate adolescents’ use of social media.

Introduction: Inconsistent jittery temporal delays between action and subsequent feedback, prevalent in network-based human-computer interaction (HCI), have been insufficiently explored, particularly regarding their impact on the sense of agency (SoA). This study investigates the SoA in the context of eyegaze HCI under jittery delay conditions. Methods: Participants performed a visual search for Chinese characters using a biresolutional gaze-contingent display, which displayed a high-resolution image in the central vision and a low-resolution in the periphery. We manipulated the delay between eye movements and display updates using a truncated normal distribution (μ to μ + 2 σ) with μ ranging from 0 to 400 ms and σ fixed at 50 ms. Playback of recorded gaze data provided a non-controllable condition. Results: The study revealed that both reported authorship and controllability scores, as well as the fixation count per second, decreased as μ increased, aligning with trends observed under constant delay conditions. The subjective authorship weakened significantly at a μ of 94 ms. Notably, the comparison between jittery and constant delays indicated the minimum value (μ) of the distribution as a critical parameter influencing both authorship perception and visual search time efficiency. Discussion: This finding underscores the importance of the shortest delay in modulating SoA. Further examining the relative distribution for fixation duration and saccade amplitude suggests an adaptation in action planning and attention distribution in response to delay. By providing a systematic examination of the statistical attributes of jittery delays that most significantly affect SoA, this research offers valuable implications for the design of efficient, delay-tolerant eye-gaze HCI, expanding our understanding of SoA in technologically mediated interactions. Moreover, our findings highlight the significance of considering both constant and variable delay impacts in HCI usability design, marking a novel contribution to the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the characteristic of sense of agency and its influencing mechanism in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, we measured sense of agency of Chinese people for three consecutive years (2020 ~ 2022). A total of 5342 valid questionnaires were collected. The results showed that COVID-19 risk perception and sense of agency are negatively correlated; The mediation role of perceived social support between COVID-19 risk perception and sense of agency is significant; The mediation role of general self-efficacy between COVID-19 risk perception and sense of agency is significant; The chain mediation effect of perceived social support and general self-efficacy between COVID-19 risk perception and sense of agency is significant. These findings demonstrate the significant role of intrinsic and extrinsic social factors in the sense of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution, in part discussed by the authors at the ‘Andare Avanti’ study day organized in January 2023, seeks to outline the role played by co-reflective dialogue between patient and therapist, in the emergence of Subjectivity and the sense of agency in psychotherapy. Starting from the analysis of concepts that have become classics in the Psychoanalysis of Relationships, such as those of ‘creativity’ and ‘delegation’, a theoretical revisiting of them is proposed aimed at recovering the implicit, corporeal and intersubjective bases of the therapeutic process. In an attempt to describe the complex links between the self-reflective and pre-reflective, individual and relational dimensions of the sense of agency in psychotherapy, the analysis of a clinical vignette is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In recent years, due to the prevalence of virtual reality (VR) and human-computer interaction (HCI) research, along with the expectation that understanding the process of establishing sense of ownership, sense of agency, and limb heaviness (in this study, limb heaviness is replaced with comfort level) will contribute to the development of various medical rehabilitation, various studies have been actively conducted in these fields. Previous studies have indicated that each perceptual characteristics decrease in response to positive delay. However, it is still unclear how each perceptual characteristic changes in response to negative delay. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to deduce how changes occur in the perceptual characteristics when certain settings are manipulated using the avatar developed in this study. This study conducted experiments using an avatar system developed for this research that uses electromyography as the interface. Two separate experiments involved twelve participants: a preliminary experiment and a main experiment. As observed in the previous study, it was confirmed that each perceptual characteristics decreased for positive delay. In addition, the range of the preliminary experiment was insufficient for the purpose of this study, which was to confirm the perceptual characteristics for negative delay, thus confirming the validity of conducting this experiment. Meanwhile, the main experiment showed that the sense of ownership, sense of agency, and comfort level decreased gradually as delay time decreased, (i.e., this event is prior to action with intention, which could not be examined in the previous study). This suggests that control by the brain-machine interface is difficult to use when it is too fast. In addition, the distribution of the most strongly perceived settings in human perceptual characteristics was wider in regions with larger delays, suggesting this may lead to the evaluation of an internal model believed to exist in the human cerebellum. The avatar developed for this study may have the potential to create a new experimental paradigm for perceptual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent interest in the experience of the operator as an agent ("agency") and the notable recent research activity in the interaction of this operator with robot swarms, referred as human–swarm interaction systems (HSI), brings new challenges and opens novel perspectives to interpret and counterbalance the difficulties that arise in highly automated systems, mainly in systems that require human–machine cooperation. It is known that the automation can modify the agentive experience and these changes can impact the operator performance and the system suitability. The concept of agency, thus, provides us with new conceptual tools and measures to improve and optimize the design, control and interaction of these systems. We propose in this article the development of a simulation platform to apply the framework of agency to the HSI field. As a proof of concept, the platform is employed to assess how the level of automation influences an operator acknowledgement and management of such system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined whether stroke survivors' self-determination, sense of agency (SoA), and self-efficacy affect their motivation to recover and their degree of independence in activities of daily living. A cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted among patients undergoing rehabilitation at a hospital. The FIM and Brunnstrom Stage (Br-S) scores in the second month of rehabilitation were analyzed to determine the degree of motor function recovery. As a result, significant associations were observed between "self-determination" and "motivation," "SoA" and "self-efficacy," "self-efficacy" and "motivation," and "motivation" and "FIM scores." These results indicated that self-determination and self-efficacy may affect patients' motivation to undergo rehabilitation, respectively. Among these, SoA was found to be a factor specifically influencing self-efficacy. These findings also suggest that motivation influences FIM scores, one of the rehabilitation outcomes. Taken together, this work provides insights into potential interventions through which healthcare providers may be able to improve patient motivation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an account of how children's sense of agency is produced in machinic assemblages. The ethnographic data used in this study originated in one elementary school classroom. By utilising children's own expressions of their agency and by examining the machinic assemblages in which these expressions were produced, we demonstrate that school policies are not merely a background for schools' mundane practices. Rather, when combined with other elements in a school setting, policies have heterogeneous consequences for children's sense of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate the mechanisms and boundary conditions of social media upward comparison on adolescents' learning engagement, this study utilized two separate approaches. In research 1, a convenience sampling method was employed to conduct a questionnaire survey among 609 adolescents. The aim was to explore the influence of social media's upward comparative tendency on learning engagement. In research 2, real social media platforms were utilized to select short videos as experimental materials. These materials were used to manipulate instantaneous social media upward comparison and examine its impact on learning engagement. The research 1's result indicated that the mediating effect of the sense of agency was significant, as well as the moderating effect of growth mindset. However, the mediating effect of positive-negative emotions was found to be insignificant.Regarding instantaneous social media upward comparison and learning engagement, positive and negative emotions were found to play a complete mediating role. However, the mediating role of agency and the moderating role of growth mindset were not significant.This study offers practical insights for educators, enabling them to develop a correct understanding and effectively regulate adolescents' use of social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vocalization significantly impacts daily human activities by affecting cognitive, physical, and emotional aspects. Despite its importance, physical and social barriers can restrict individuals’ ability to express themselves vocally. To address this issue, the authors have proposed an innovative method to enhance vocal agency through auditory and laryngeal vibratory stimuli. However, prior research has predominantly examined the effectiveness of this technique in scenarios involving loud vocalizations, and the validity of this method has thus yet to be sufficiently verified. In this study, we examined the effects of vibratory stimuli on the sense of agency in the case of general vocalizations. Findings revealed that vibratory stimuli applied to areas not directly involved in vocalization, such as the wrist, failed to foster a sense of vocal agency, in stark contrast to the effects observed with stimuli applied to the larynx. These results underscore the importance of directing vibratory stimuli to anatomical regions integral to vocalization to enhance vocal agency effectively. This research has substantial potential to influence the development of interactive and virtual reality technologies and support individuals experiencing speech difficulties.

The sense of agency refers to the experience of control over voluntary actions and their effects. There is growing interest in the notion of we-agency, whereby individual sense of agency is supplanted by a collective agentic experience. The existence of this unique agentic state would have profound implications for human responsibility, and, as such, warrants further scrutiny. In this paper, we review the concept of we-agency and examine whether evidence supports it. We argue that this concept entails multiplying hypothetical agentic states associated with joint action, thus ending up with an entangled phenomenology that appears somewhat speculative when weighted against the available evidence. In light of this, we suggest that the concept of we-agency should be abandoned in favor of a more parsimonious framework for the sense of agency in joint action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissociation and diminished sense of agency are experiential distortions of disintegration in the perception of self and action. Although one is often implied in the other, they are seldom studied together. Assessing their relationship and shared influences may allow for a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of dissociative experiences. We aimed to examine their temporal (concurrent or directional) co-occurrence, and to elucidate their etiology, focusing on posttraumatic symptoms (PTS), poor sleep, and their hypothesized joint effect. N = 113 adults oversampled for the existence of trauma exposure history reported PTS and then, for a week, wore an actigraphic sleep monitor, reported subjective sleep quality each morning, and reported state dissociation (depersonalization, derealization, and absorption) and sense of agency four times each day. Data were analyzed using multilevel linear modeling. Higher state dissociation correlated with diminished state sense of agency, but only contemporaneously, not directionally. Both hypothesized etiological factors, namely, PTS (especially complex) and poor sleep (objective and subjective) predicted state dissociation and diminished state sense of agency, but psychological distress seemed to overshadow these main effects. However, robust interactive effects suggested that poor sleep predicted dissociation and disruptions in the sense of agency only among individuals with low PTS. These findings suggest that PTS and poor sleep quality are separate paths to dissociation and impaired sense of agency. General Scientific Summary: There is some controversy over the centrality of trauma exposure in the etiology of a range of dissociative experiences, and it has been suggested that sleep-related factors may account for the association between trauma and dissociation. The current study suggests that posttraumatic symptoms and sleep disturbances are two different pathways to dissociative experiences, as objectively assessed sleep quality predicted dissociation mainly among individuals who were low in posttraumatic symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of agency (SoA) indicates a person's ability to perceive her/his own motor acts as actually being her/his and, through them, to exert control over the course of external events. Disruptions in SoA may profoundly affect the individual's functioning, as observed in several neuropsychiatric disorders. This is the first article to systematically review studies that investigated intentional binding (IB), a quantitative proxy for SoA measurement, in neurological and psychiatric patients. Eligible were studies of IB involving patients with neurological and/or psychiatric disorders. We included 15 studies involving 692 individuals. Risk of bias was low throughout studies. Abnormally increased action‐outcome binding was found in schizophrenia and in patients with Parkinson's disease taking dopaminergic medications or reporting impulsive‐compulsive behaviors. A decreased IB effect was observed in Tourette's disorder and functional movement disorders, whereas increased action‐outcome binding was found in patients with the cortico‐basal syndrome. The extent of IB deviation from healthy control values correlated with the severity of symptoms in several disorders. Inconsistent effects were found for autism spectrum disorders, anorexia nervosa, and borderline personality disorder. Findings pave the way for treatments specifically targeting SoA in neuropsychiatric disorders where IB is altered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being able to distinguish between self and externally generated actions is a key factor influencing learning and adaptive behavior. Previous literature has highlighted that whenever a person makes or perceives an error, a series of error‐related potentials (ErrPs) can be detected in the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal, such as the error‐related negativity (ERN) component. Recently, ErrPs have gained a lot of interest for the use in brain–computer interface (BCI) applications, which give the user the ability to communicate by means of decoding his/her brain activity. Here, we explored the feasibility of employing a support vector machine classifier to accurately disentangle self‐agency errors from other‐agency errors from the EEG signal at a single‐trial level in a sample of 23 participants. Our results confirmed the viability of correctly disentangling self/internal versus other/external agency‐error attributions at different stages of brain processing based on the latency and the spatial topographical distribution of key ErrP features, namely, the ERN and P600 components, respectively. These results offer a new perspective on how to distinguish self versus externally generated errors providing new potential implementations on BCI systems. The process of attributing errors to either oneself or external factors can be decoded on a trial‐by‐trial basis by analyzing error‐related brain potentials by means of the timing and spatial distribution of the error‐related negativity and P600 components. The distinction between internal and external agency‐error attributions holds promise for introducing novel methods for integrating adaptive and corrective functionalities within brain–computer interface systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sense of agency refers to the subjective feeling of controlling one's own actions, and through them, the external events. Sense of agency is integral to self-consciousness, and been the subject of numerous studies aimed at uncovering its underlying mechanism. However, the significance of the sense of agency in human behavior remains poorly understood. Is it simply a by-product of action, or does it play a causal role in our behaviors? This review first briefly summarizes the leading theories of the mechanism underlying the sense of agency and then discusses the ways in which it influences human perception and behavior. The sense of agency is not only a subjective feeling experienced during decision-making and action--execution, but also plays a critical role in shaping our perceptions of the outcomes of our actions, directing our attention, and informing our actions. Furthermore, understanding the role of the sense of agency in cognitive systems is essential for the development of techniques that predict human behavior and subject experience and for designing optimal action plans for systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual Reality is expanding its use to several fields of application, including health and education. The continuous growth of this technology comes with new challenges related to the ways in which users feel inside these virtual environments. There are various guidelines on ways to enhance users' virtual experience in terms of immersion or presence. Nonetheless, there is no extensive research on enhancing the sense of agency (SoA), a phenomenon which refers to the self-awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one's actions in the world. After reviewing the state of the art of technologies developed in the field of Affective Computing (AC), we propose a framework for designing immersive virtual environments (IVE) to enhance the users' SoA. The framework defines the flow of interaction between users and the virtual world, as well as the AC technologies required for each interactive component to recognise, interpret and respond coherently within the IVE in order to enhance the SoA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]