Sense of agency
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The sense of agency (SoA), or sense of control, is the
Normally SoA and SoO are tightly integrated, such that while typing one has an enduring, embodied, and tacit sense that "my own fingers are doing the moving" (SoO) and that "the typing movements are controlled (or volitionally directed) by me" (SoA). In patients with certain forms of pathological experience (e.g., schizophrenia) the integration of SoA and SoO may become disrupted in some manner. In this case, movements may be executed or thoughts made manifest, for which the patient with schizophrenia has a sense of ownership, but not a sense of agency.[not verified in body]
Regarding SoA for both motor movements and thoughts, further distinctions may be found in both first-order (immediate, pre-reflective) experience[3] and higher-order (reflective or introspective) consciousness.[4][page needed] For example, while typing one has a sense of control and thus SoA for the ongoing action of typing; this is an example of SoA in first-order experience which is immediate and prior to any explicit intellectual reflection upon the typing actions themselves. In this case, the individual is not focusing on the typing movements per se but rather, intimately involved with the task at hand. If one is subsequently asked if they just performed the action of typing, they can -correctly- attribute agency to themselves. This is an example of a higher-order, reflective, conscious "attribution" of agency, which is a derivative notion stemming from the immediate, pre-reflective "sense" of agency.
Definition
The concept of agency implies an active organism, one who desires, makes plans, and carries out actions.[5] The sense of agency plays a pivotal role in cognitive development, including the first stage of self-awareness (or pre-theoretical experience of one's own mentality), which scaffolds theory of mind capacities.[6][page needed] Indeed, the ability to recognize oneself as the agent of a behavior is the way the self builds as an entity independent from the external world.[1] The sense of agency and its scientific study has important implications in social cognition, moral reasoning, and psychopathology. The conceptual distinction between SoA and SoO was defined by philosopher and phenomenologist Shaun Gallagher.[2] Using a different terminology, essentially the same distinction has been made by John Campbell,[7] and Lynn Stephens and George Graham.[4][page needed]
Psychological measures
Sense of agency is difficult to measure because individuals are often not aware of their sense of agency while performing tasks. An implicit measure of agency relies on intentional binding an effect where the perceived time between related events is decreased. Other implicit measures rely on sensory attenuation to voluntary acts, where one perceives sensations related to voluntary acts less. Explicit measures can depend upon self-report or perceived responsibility for an outcome.[8]
Neuroscience
A number of experiments in healthy individuals has been undertaken in order to determine the functional anatomy of the sense of agency. These experiments have consistently documented the role of the posterior
Accumulating evidence from
The investigation of the neural correlates of reciprocal imitation is extremely important because it provides an ecological paradigm (a situation close to everyday life) to address the issue of the sense of agency.[15] There is evidence that reciprocal imitation plays a constitutive role in the early development of an implicit sense of self as a social agent.[6][page needed]
A primary source has reported a
Another approach to understanding the neuroscientific underpinnings of the sense of agency is to examine clinical conditions in which purposeful limb movement occurs without an associated sense of agency.[citation needed] The most clear clinical demonstration of this situation is alien hand syndrome. In this condition, associated with specific forms of brain damage, the affected individual loses the sense of agency without losing a sense of ownership of the affected body part.
Agency and psychopathology
Investigation of the sense of agency is important to explain positive symptoms of schizophrenia, like thought insertion and delusions of control.[8]: 4 Research has shown that people diagnosed with schizophrenia have issues with processing agency.[8]: 5 [17] Marc Jeannerod proposed that the process of self-recognition operates covertly and effortlessly. It depends upon a set of mechanisms involving the processing of specific neural signals, from sensory as well as from central origin.
See also
- Common coding theory
- Empathic concern
- Locus of control – whether people believe that their choices, environmental factors, fate, and/or random chance is controlling their lives
- Mirror neurons
- Morality
- Motor cognition
- Neuroscience of free will
- Self-agency
- Self-efficacy
References
- ^ a b Jeannerod, M. (2003). The mechanism of self-recognition in human. Behavioural Brain Research, 142, 1-15.
- ^ a b Gallagher, S. (2000). Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 14–21.
- ^ Tsakiris M, Schütz-Bosbach S, Gallagher S (2007) On agency and body-ownership: phenomenological and neurocognitive reflections. Conscious Cogn 16:645–660
- ^ a b Stephens, G. L., & Graham, G. (2000). When self-consciousness breaks: Alien voices and inserted thoughts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.[page needed]
- ^ Lewis, M. (1990). Intention, consciousness, desires and development. Psychological Inquiry, 1, 278–283.
- ^ a b Rochat, P. (1999). Early Social Cognition: Understanding Others in the First Months of Life. Mahawah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.[page needed]
- ^ Campbell, John (1999): "Schizophrenia, the Space of Reasons, and Thinking as a Motor Process." Monist 82 (4), 609–625.
- ^ PMID 27621713.
- ^ Farrer, C., Franck, N., Georgieff, N., Frith, C. D., Decety, J., & Jeannerod, M. (2003). Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study. NeuroImage 18, 324–333.
- ^ Ruby, P., & Decety, J. (2001). Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: A PET investigation of agency. Nature Neuroscience 4, 546–550.
- ^ Daprati, E., et al. (2000). Recognition of self produced movement in a case of severe neglect. Neurocase, 6, 477–486
- ^ Jackson, P.L., & Decety, J. (2004). Motor cognition: A new paradigm to study self other interactions. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 14, 259–263.
- ^ Berlucchi, G., & Aglioti, S. (1997). The body in the brain: neural bases of corporeal awareness. Trends in Neurosciences, 20, 560–564.
- ^ Blanke, O., & Arzy, S. (2005). The out-of-body experience: Disturbed self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. Neuroscientist, 11, 16–24.
- ^ Decety, J., & Sommerville, J.A. (2003). Shared representations between self and others: A social cognitive neuroscience view. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 527–533.
- ^ Decety, J., Chaminade, T., Grèzes, J. and Meltzoff, A.N. (2002). A PET exploration of the neural mechanisms involved in reciprocal imitation. Neuroimage 15, 265–272.
- S2CID 250150775.
Further reading
- Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford University Press.
- Haggard, P., Eitam, B. (Eds.) (2015). The Sense of Agency. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Jeannerod, M. (1997). The cognitive neuroscience of action. Wiley–Blackwell.
- Morsella, E., Bargh, J.A., & Gollwitzer, P.M. (Eds.) (2009). Oxford Handbook of Human Action. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Roessler, J., & Eilan, N. (Eds.) (2003). Agency and self-awareness. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Braun, N., Debener, S., Spychala, N., Bongartz, E., Sörös, P., Müller, H., Philipsen, A. (2018). The Senses of Agency and Ownership: A Review. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 535.