The role of regularity detection and prediction in the exploration of sense of agency

Abstract

The Sense of Agency (SoA) refers to the subjective feeling of controlling one’s actions and outcomes. Both the predictive and retrospective processes are considered to contribute to this subjective feeling. The predictive process focuses on the consistency between the sensory prediction and the actual sensory input by the internal model, while the retrospective process emphasizes the detection of regularities between one’s action and sensory input. However, how the two types of processes contribute to the exploration of control remains unclear. In the present study, we tackled this question by examining the effect of updating the internal model on the SoA in a control detection task. Participants first adapted to a rotation of visual feedback while controlling a dot on the screen, then conducted free movements to choose the dot they felt they could control most effectively among five dots with different rotation angles. Experiment 1 used a tracking task for the motor adaptation, while Experiment 2 used a reaching task to replicate the result of Experiment 1. The results of the motor adaptation in both experiments did not have a significant effect on the control detection task. This indicates that updating the internal model appears to have little influence on the regularity detection. Accordingly, we suggest that participants’ SoA was more dependent on retrospective than predictive processes during exploration of the SoA. These findings provide important insights for understanding the SoA in the context of exploratory behaviors within novel environments.