Department of Psychology III, University of Würzburg, Röntgenring 11, 97070 Würzburg, Germany.
Institute of Psychology, University of Hildesheim, Universitätsplatz 1, 31141 Hildesheim, Germany.
Neuropsychologia. 2019 Sep;132:107145. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.107145. Epub 2019 Jul 15.
Sensory attenuation of self-produced, compared to physically identical but externally produced events is a classical finding in research on perception in action. The most prominent model to explain this effect draws on an internal forward model generating predictions about action outcomes, efference copies, during action planning and initiation. Even though this finding has a long tradition in psychology and neuroscience, several studies have highlighted methodological limitations which open the door for alternative explanations of sensory attenuation effects, most notably in terms of temporal prediction. Here we present an experimental design which carefully controls for this confounding factor. Crucially, we observed the auditory N1 component of the event-related potential to be attenuated for self-generated tones as compared to externally generated tones even when a predictive cue (a bar that is continuously filling up) allows for identical temporal predictability of both events. These findings suggest that voluntary actions do indeed involve a unique, predictive component, affecting the perceptual processing of ensuing events.
与物理上相同但由外部产生的事件相比，自我产生的感觉衰减是动作感知研究中的一个经典发现。解释这种效应的最突出模型借鉴了内部前向模型，该模型在动作规划和启动期间生成关于动作结果的预测，即传出副本。尽管这一发现在心理学和神经科学中有很长的传统，但一些研究强调了方法学上的局限性，为感觉衰减效应的替代解释打开了大门，尤其是在时间预测方面。在这里，我们提出了一个实验设计，可以仔细控制这种混杂因素。至关重要的是，我们观察到事件相关电位中的听觉 N1 成分对于自我产生的音调比外部产生的音调衰减，即使预测线索（一个不断填充的条）允许两个事件具有相同的时间可预测性。这些发现表明，自愿行动确实涉及到一个独特的、预测性的成分，影响到后续事件的感知处理。
