Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Cognition. 2013 Dec;129(3):574-8. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.08.020. Epub 2013 Sep 21.
The sense of agency refers to the experience of being in control of one's actions and their consequences. The 19th century French philosopher Maine de Biran proposed that the sensation of effort might provide an internal cue for distinguishing self-caused from other changes in the environment. The present study is the first to empirically test the philosophical idea that effort promotes self-agency. We used intentional binding, which refers to the subjective temporal attraction between an action and its sensory consequences, as an implicit measure of the sense of agency. Effort was manipulated independent of the primary task by requiring participants to pull stretch bands of varying resistance levels. We found that intentional binding was enhanced under conditions of increased effort. This suggests not only that the experience of effort directly contributes to the sense of agency, but also that the integration of effort as an agency cue is non-specific to the effort requirement of the action itself.
主体感是指对自身行为及其后果的控制感。19 世纪法国哲学家 Maine de Biran 提出，努力的感觉可能为区分自我引起的变化和环境引起的变化提供内部线索。本研究首次实证检验了哲学观点，即努力促进自我主体感。我们使用了意图绑定，它是指动作与其感觉后果之间的主观时间吸引力，作为主体感的一种内隐测量。通过要求参与者拉动不同阻力水平的拉伸带，我们在不影响主要任务的情况下独立地操纵了努力。我们发现，在努力增加的情况下，意图绑定增强。这不仅表明努力的体验直接有助于主体感，还表明将努力作为主体感线索的整合与动作本身的努力要求无关。
