Vastano Roberta, Ambrosini Ettore, Ulloa José L, Brass Marcel
Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium; University of Miami, Department of Neurological Surgery, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, Miami, FL, USA.
Department of General Psychology, University of Padua, Padua, Italy; Department of Neuroscience, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Cortex. 2020 May;126:182-199. doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2020.01.013. Epub 2020 Jan 31.
The fluency with which we plan and execute actions has been demonstrated to increase our sense of agency (SoA). However, the exact mechanisms how fluency influences SoA are still poorly understood. It is an open question whether this effect is primarily driven by fluency of stimulus processing, response preparation or by processes following response execution. In the current study we aim at addressing this question by measuring event-related potentials reflecting pre- and post-response mechanisms and relate them to intentional binding, a measure of implicit SoA. To manipulate the fluency of action we asked participants to perform actions that were congruent or incongruent with a visual target (a finger movement). Participants' actions triggered an auditory outcome. To measure the intentional binding effect we asked participants to estimate the time between the executed actions and the ensuing auditory effects. We found that congruent actions generated a larger intentional binding effect (i.e., stronger time compression between actions and effects) and this positively correlated with a late P300 evoked during the processing of congruent stimuli. At the action selection level, we found a larger central pre-response positivity for incongruent condition as relates to interference effects. Finally, post response mechanisms elicited a larger central negativity for incongruent responses presumably related to uncertainty. We provide new evidence on the determinants of intentional binding driven by the fluency of action, by showing that both pre and post-response mechanisms are crucial in the generation of the feelings of agency. Importantly, stimulus processing and response preparation ERPs seem to be more selectively modulated by congruency-effects given specific brain-behavioral correlations.
我们计划和执行动作的流畅性已被证明能增强我们的能动感（SoA）。然而，流畅性影响能动感的确切机制仍知之甚少。这一效应主要是由刺激处理的流畅性、反应准备还是反应执行后的过程驱动，仍是一个悬而未决的问题。在当前的研究中，我们旨在通过测量反映反应前和反应后机制的事件相关电位来解决这个问题，并将它们与内隐能动感的一种测量指标——意向性绑定联系起来。为了操纵动作的流畅性，我们要求参与者执行与视觉目标（手指运动）一致或不一致的动作。参与者的动作会触发一个听觉结果。为了测量意向性绑定效应，我们要求参与者估计执行动作与随后听觉效果之间的时间。我们发现，一致的动作产生了更大的意向性绑定效应（即动作与效果之间更强的时间压缩），并且这与在处理一致刺激时诱发的晚期P300呈正相关。在动作选择层面，我们发现与干扰效应相关的不一致条件下有更大的中央反应前正波。最后，反应后机制在不一致反应中诱发了更大的中央负波，这可能与不确定性有关。我们通过表明反应前和反应后机制在产生能动感方面都至关重要，为动作流畅性驱动的意向性绑定的决定因素提供了新证据。重要的是，鉴于特定的脑-行为相关性，刺激处理和反应准备的事件相关电位似乎更有选择性地受到一致性效应的调节。
