Matti Vuorre

How action selection influences the sense of agency: An ERP study

Abstract Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the feeling that we are in control of our actions and, through them, of events in the outside world. One influential view claims that the SoA depends on retrospectively matching the expected and actual outcomes of action. However, recent studies have revealed an additional, prospective component to SoA, driven by action selection processes. We used event‐related potentials (ERPs) to clarify the neural mechanisms underlying prospective agency. Subliminal priming was used to manipulate the fluency of selecting a left or right hand action in response to a supraliminal target. These actions were followed by one of several coloured circles, after a variable delay. Participants then rated their degree of control over this visual outcome. Incompatible priming impaired action selection, and reduced sense of agency over action outcomes, relative to compatible priming. More negative ERPs immediately after the action, linked to post‐decisional action monitoring, were associated with reduced agency ratings over action outcomes. Additionally, feedback‐related negativity evoked by the outcome was also associated with reduced agency ratings. These ERP components may reflect brain processes underlying prospective and retrospective components of sense of agency respectively. HighlightsDifficulty of action selection reduces the sense of agency over action outcomes.Neural signals at the time of the action contribute to judgements of agency.Neural processing of action outcomes also contributes to sense of agency.Sense of agency integrates action‐ and outcome‐related neural information.

Investigating the Prospective Sense of Agency: Effects of Processing Fluency, Stimulus Ambiguity, and Response Conflict

How do we know how much control we have over our environment? The sense of agency refers to the feeling that we are in control of our actions, and that, through them, we can control our external environment. Thus, agency clearly involves matching intentions, actions, and outcomes. The present studies investigated the possibility that processes of action selection, i.e., choosing what action to make, contribute to the sense of agency. Since selection of action necessarily precedes execution of action, such effects must be prospective. In contrast, most literature on sense of agency has focussed on the retrospective computation whether an outcome fits the action performed or intended. This hypothesis was tested in an ecologically rich, dynamic task based on a computer game. Across three experiments, we manipulated three different aspects of action selection processing: visual processing fluency, categorization ambiguity, and response conflict. Additionally, we measured the relative contributions of prospective, action selection-based cues, and retrospective, outcome-based cues to the sense of agency. Manipulations of action selection were orthogonally combined with discrepancy of visual feedback of action. Fluency of action selection had a small but reliable effect on the sense of agency. Additionally, as expected, sense of agency was strongly reduced when visual feedback was discrepant with the action performed. The effects of discrepant feedback were larger than the effects of action selection fluency, and sometimes suppressed them. The sense of agency is highly sensitive to disruptions of action-outcome relations. However, when motor control is successful, and action-outcome relations are as predicted, fluency or dysfluency of action selection provides an important prospective cue to the sense of agency.

The relation between the sense of agency and the experience of flow

This article investigates the relation between peoples feelings of agency and their feelings of flow. In the dominant model describing how people are able to assess their own agency-the comparator model of agency-when the persons intentions match perfectly to what happens, the discrepancy between intention and outcome is zero, and the person is thought to interpret this lack of discrepancy as being in control. The lack of perceived push back from the external world seems remarkably similar to the state that has been described as a state of flow. However, when we used a computer game paradigm to investigate the relation between peoples feelings of agency and their feelings of flow, we found a dissociation between these two states. Although these two states may, in some ways, seem to be similar, our data indicate that they are governed by different principles and phenomenology.

Within-Subject Mediation Analysis for Experimental Data in Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience

Statistical mediation allows researchers to investigate potential causal effects of experimental manipulations through intervening variables. It is a powerful tool for assessing the presence and strength of postulated causal mechanisms. Although mediation is used in certain areas of psychology, it is rarely applied in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. One reason for the scarcity of applications is that these areas of psychology commonly employ within-subjects designs, and mediation models for within-subjects data are considerably more complicated than for between-subjects data. Here, we draw attention to the importance and ubiquity of mediational hypotheses in within-subjects designs, and we present a general and flexible software package for conducting Bayesian within-subjects mediation analyses in the R programming environment. We use experimental data from cognitive psychology to illustrate the benefits of within-subject mediation for theory testing and comparison.

Bayesian evaluation of behavior change interventions: a brief introduction and a practical example

ABSTRACT Introduction Evaluating effects of behavior change interventions is a central interest in health psychology and behavioral medicine. Researchers in these fields routinely use frequentist statistical methods to evaluate the extent to which these interventions impact behavior and the hypothesized mediating processes in the population. However, calls to move beyond the exclusive use of frequentist reasoning are now widespread in psychology and allied fields. We suggest adding Bayesian statistical methods to the researcher’s toolbox of statistical methods. Objectives We first present the basic principles of the Bayesian approach to statistics and why they are useful for researchers in health psychology. We then provide a practical example on how to evaluate intervention effects using Bayesian methods, with a focus on Bayesian hierarchical modeling. We provide the necessary materials for introductory-level readers to follow the tutorial. Conclusion: Bayesian analytical methods are now available to researchers through easy-to-use software packages, and we recommend using them to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions for their conceptual and practical benefits.

Cross Domain Self-Monitoring in Anosognosia for Memory Loss in Alzheimer’s disease

Anosognosia for memory loss is a common feature of Alzheimers disease (AD). Recent theories have proposed that anosognosia, a disruption in awareness at a global level, may reflect specific deficits in self-monitoring, or local awareness. Though anosognosia for memory loss has been shown to relate to memory self-monitoring, it is not clear if it relates to self-monitoring deficits in other domains (i.e., motor). The current study examined this question by analyzing the relationship between anosognosia for memory loss, memory monitoring, and motor monitoring in 35 individuals with mild to moderate AD. Anosognosia was assessed via clinical interview before participants completed a metamemory task to measure memory monitoring, and a computerized agency task to measure motor monitoring. Cognitive and psychological measures included memory, executive functions, and mood. Memory monitoring was associated with motor monitoring; however, anosognosia was associated only with memory monitoring, and not motor monitoring. Cognition and mood related differently to each measure of self-awareness. Results are interpreted within a hierarchical model of awareness in which local self-monitoring processes are associated across domain, but appear to only contribute to a global level awareness in a domain-specific fashion.

Tip-of-the-tongue states predict enhanced feedback processing and subsequent memory

This article investigates the relations among the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state, event related potentials (ERPs) to correct feedback to questions, and subsequent memory. ERPs were used to investigate neurocognitive responses to feedback to general information questions for which participants had expressed either being or not being in a TOT state. For questions in which participants were unable to answer within 3 s, they indicated whether they were experiencing a TOT state and then were immediately provided with the correct answer. Feedback during a TOT state, as opposed to not knowing the answer, was associated with enhanced positivity over centro-parietal electrodes 250-700 ms post-feedback, and this enhanced positivity mediated a positive relationship between TOTs and later recall. Although effects of increased semantic access during TOT states cannot be ruled out, these results suggest that information received during TOT states elicits enhanced processing-suggestive of curiosity-leading to enhanced learning of studied material.

Curating Research Assets: A Tutorial on the Git Version Control System:

Recent calls for improving reproducibility have increased attention to the ways in which researchers curate, share, and collaborate on their research assets. In this Tutorial, we explain how version control systems, such as the popular Git program, support these functions and then show how to use Git with a graphical interface in the RStudio program. This Tutorial is written for researchers with no previous experience using version control systems and covers both single-user and collaborative workflows. The online Supplemental Material provides information on advanced Git command-line functions. Git presents an elegant solution to specific challenges to curating, sharing, and collaborating on research assets and can be implemented in common workflows with little extra effort.

Voluntary action alters the perception of visual illusions

Abstract“Intentional binding” refers to the finding that people judge voluntary actions and their effects as having occurred closer together in time than two passively observed events. If this effect reflects subjectively compressed time, then time-dependent visual illusions should be altered by voluntary initiation. To test this hypothesis, we showed participants displays that result in particular motion illusions when presented at short interstimulus intervals (ISIs). In Experiment 1 we used apparent motion, which is perceived only at very short ISIs; Experiments 2a and 2b used the Ternus display, which results in different motion illusions depending on the ISI. In support of the time compression hypothesis, when they voluntarily initiated the displays, people persisted in seeing the motion illusions associated with short ISIs at longer ISIs than had been the case during passive viewing. A control experiment indicated that this effect was not due to predictability or increased attention. Instead, voluntary action altered motion illusions, despite their purported cognitive impenetrability.