Sidarus Nura, Vuorre Matti, Haggard Patrick
Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK.
Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'Études Cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, Paris, France.
Neurosci Conscious. 2017 May 30;2017(1):nix012. doi: 10.1093/nc/nix012. eCollection 2017.
Sense of agency (SoA) refers to the experience of voluntary control over one's own actions, and, through them, over events in the outside world. Recent accounts suggest that SoA involves an integration of various cues. These include prospective cues, for example, related to the fluency of action selection, and retrospective cues, linked to outcome monitoring. It remains unclear whether these cues may have independent effects on SoA, and, in particular, how their relative contributions may change during instrumental learning. In the present study, we explored these issues by conducting a multi-study analysis of seven published and unpublished studies on the role of prospective cues to the SoA. Our main question was how the effects of selection fluency on SoA might change as information about action-outcome contingencies is gathered. Results show that selection fluency can have a general and consistent influence on the SoA, independent of outcome monitoring. This suggests selection fluency is used as a heuristic cue, to prospectively inform our SoA. In addition, our results show that the influence of selection fluency on SoA may change systematically as action-outcome contingencies are gradually learned. We speculate that dysfluent selection may impair formation of mental associations between action and outcome.
能动感（SoA）是指对自身行为以及通过这些行为对外界事件进行自主控制的体验。近期的研究表明，能动感涉及多种线索的整合。这些线索包括前瞻性线索，例如与动作选择流畅性相关的线索，以及回顾性线索，与结果监测相关。目前尚不清楚这些线索是否可能对能动感产生独立影响，特别是在工具性学习过程中它们的相对贡献如何变化。在本研究中，我们通过对七项已发表和未发表的关于前瞻性线索对能动感作用的研究进行多研究分析，探讨了这些问题。我们的主要问题是，随着关于动作 - 结果偶然性的信息被收集，选择流畅性对能动感的影响可能如何变化。结果表明，选择流畅性能够对能动感产生普遍且一致的影响，而与结果监测无关。这表明选择流畅性被用作一种启发式线索，以前瞻性地告知我们的能动感。此外，我们的结果表明，随着动作 - 结果偶然性逐渐被学习，选择流畅性对能动感的影响可能会系统性地变化。我们推测，选择不流畅可能会损害动作与结果之间心理关联的形成。
