scholarly journals Attribution of intentional agency towards robots reduces one’s own sense of agency

Cognition ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 194 ◽  
pp. 104109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Frederike Beyer ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Intentional Agency

The Origins of Intentional Agency

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk ◽  
Tim Bayne
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Theory ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Intentional Agents

As human adults, we experience ourselves as intentional agents. Here, we address how intentional agency and the corresponding agentive experiences emerge in infancy. When formulating a developmental theory of intentional agency, we encounter a so-called paradox of agency: three plausible theses regarding intentional agency that in combination seem to make it impossible for the developing infant to acquire a sense of agency. By recognizing various types of intentions, we propose a framework in which the paradox can be resolved, allowing infants to bootstrap their way to becoming intentional agents and experiencing a sense of agency.

scholarly journals Attribution of intentional agency towards robots reduces one’s own sense of agency

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Ciardo ◽  
Frederike Beyer ◽  
Davide De Tommaso ◽  
Agnieszka Wykowska
Keyword(s):  
Perceived Control ◽  
Human Robot Interaction ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Robot Assisted ◽  
Robot Interaction ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
External Events ◽  
Mechanical Devices

In the presence of others, sense of agency (SoA), i.e. the perceived relationship between our own actions and external events, is reduced. The present study aimed at investigating whether the phenomenon of reduced SoA is observed in human-robot interaction, similarly to human-human interaction. To this end, we tested SoA when people interacted with a robot (Experiment 1), with a passive, non-agentic air pump (Experiment 2), or when they interacted with both a robot and a human being (Experiment 3). Participants were asked to rate the perceived control they felt on the outcome of their action while performing a diffusion of responsibility task. Results showed that the intentional agency attributed to the artificial entity differently affect the performance and the perceived SoA on the outcome of the task. Experiment 1 showed that, when participants successfully performed an action, they rated SoA over the outcome as lower in trials in which the robot was also able to act (but did not), compared to when they were performing the task alone. However, this did not occur in Experiment 2, where the artificial entity was an air pump, which had the same influence on the task as the robot, but in a passive manner and thus lacked intentional agency. Results of Experiment 3 showed that SoA was reduced similarly for the human and robot agents, threby indicating that attribution of intentional agency plays a crucial role in reduction of SoA. Together, our results suggest that interacting with robotic agents affects SoA, similarly to interacting with other humans, but differently from interacting with non-agentic mechanical devices. This has important implications for the applied of social robotics, where a subjective decrease in SoA could have negative consequences, such as in robot-assisted care in hospitals.

Agency and Insanity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen P. Garvey
Keyword(s):  
Agency Theory ◽  
Mental Disease ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Traditional Theory ◽  
Alien Hand Syndrome ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Alien Hand ◽  
Title Character

66 Buffalo Law Review 123 (2018)This Article offers an unorthodox theory of insanity. According to the traditional theory, insanity is a cognitive or volitional incapacity arising from a mental disease or defect. As an alternative to the traditional theory, some commentators have proposed that insanity is an especially debilitating form of irrationality. Each of these theories faces fair-minded objections. In contrast to these theories, this Article proposes that a person is insane if and because he lacks a sense of agency. The theory of insanity it defends might therefore be called the lost-agency theory.According to the lost-agency theory, a person lacks a sense of agency when he experiences his mind and body moving but doesn’t experience himself as the author or agent of those movements. The title character in the movie Dr. Strangelove suffered from what’s known as alien hand syndrome. People suffering from this syndrome experience the moving hand as their hand but don’t experience themselves as the author or agent of its movements. The lost-agency theory portrays insanity as alien hand syndrome writ large. The insane actor is like someone possessed by an alien self. He’s not in charge of his mind or body when he commits the crime.

Measuring Agency Change Across the Domain of Hypnosis

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vince Polito ◽  
Amanda Barnier ◽  
Erik Woody
Keyword(s):  
Rating Scale ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Pass Rates ◽  
Current Experiment ◽  
Multidimensional Construct ◽  
Time Points ◽  
Hypnotic Induction ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Postexperimental Inquiry

Building on Hilgard’s (1965) classic work, the domain of hypnosis has been conceptualised by Barnier, Dienes, and Mitchell (2008) as comprising three levels: (1) classic hypnotic items, (2) responding between and within items, and (3) state and trait. The current experiment investigates sense of agency across each of these three levels. Forty-six high hypnotisable participants completed an ideomotor (arm levitation), a challenge (arm rigidity) and a cognitive (anosmia) item either following a hypnotic induction (hypnosis condition) or without a hypnotic induction (wake condition). In a postexperimental inquiry, participants rated their feelings of control at three time points for each item: during the suggestion, test and cancellation phases. They also completed the Sense of Agency Rating Scale (Polito, Barnier, & Woody, 2013) for each item. Pass rates, control ratings, and agency scores fluctuated across the different types of items and for the three phases of each item; also, control ratings and agency scores often differed across participants who passed versus failed each item. Interestingly, whereas a hypnotic induction influenced the likelihood of passing items, it had no direct effect on agentive experiences. These results suggest that altered sense of agency is not a unidimensional or static quality “switched on” by hypnotic induction, but a dynamic multidimensional construct that varies across items, over time and according to whether individuals pass or fail suggestions.

Dual Intentional Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Left Hemisphere ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Surgery ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Split Brain ◽  
Intentional Agency ◽  
Intentional Agents ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
The Right

This chapter defends the 2-agents claim, according to which the two hemispheres of a split-brain subject are associated with distinct intentional agents. The empirical basis of this claim is that, while both hemispheres are the source or site of intentions, the capacity to integrate them in practical reasoning no longer operates interhemispherically after split-brain surgery. As a result, the right hemisphere-associated agent, R, and the left hemisphere-associated agent, L, enjoy intentional autonomy from each other. Although the positive case for the 2-agents claim is grounded mainly in experimental findings, the claim is not contradicted by what we know of split-brain subjects’ ordinary behavior, that is, the way they act outside of experimental conditions.

scholarly journals How the Design of YouTube Influences User Sense of Agency

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Lukoff ◽  
Ulrik Lyngs ◽  
Himanshu Zade ◽  
J. Vera Liao ◽  
James Choi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency

scholarly journals Altered sense of agency in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome: behavioural, clinical and functional magnetic resonance imaging findings

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Zapparoli ◽  
Silvia Seghezzi ◽  
Francantonio Devoto ◽  
Marika Mariano ◽  
Giuseppe Banfi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Tourette Syndrome ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Intentional Binding ◽  
Action Monitoring

Abstract Current neurocognitive models of motor control postulate that accurate action monitoring is crucial for a normal experience of agency—the ability to attribute the authorship of our actions and their consequences to ourselves. Recent studies demonstrated that action monitoring is impaired in Gilles de la Tourette syndrome, a movement disorder characterized by motor and vocal tics. It follows that Tourette syndrome patients may suffer from a perturbed sense of agency, the hypothesis tested in this study. To this end, we recruited 25 Tourette syndrome patients and 25 matched healthy controls in a case-control behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging study. As an implicit index of the sense of agency, we measured the intentional binding phenomenon, i.e., the perceived temporal compression between voluntary movements and their external consequences. We found evidence of an impaired sense of agency in Tourette syndrome patients who, as a group, did not show a significant intentional binding. The more reduced was the individual intentional binding, the more severe were the motor symptoms. Specific differences between the two groups were also observed in terms of brain activation patterns. In the healthy controls group, the magnitude of the intentional binding was associated with the activity of a premotor–parietal–cerebellar network. This relationship was not present in the Tourette syndrome group, suggesting an altered activation of the agency brain network for self-generated acts. We conclude that the less accurate action monitoring described in Tourette syndrome also involves the assessment of the consequences of actions in the outside world. We discuss that this may lead to difficulties in distinguishing external consequences produced by their own actions from the ones caused by others in Tourette syndrome patients.

scholarly journals Modeling intentional agency: a neo-Gricean framework

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matti Sarkia
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
General Framework ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Theoretical Modeling ◽  
Model Construction ◽  
Coarse Grained ◽  
Scientific Model ◽  
Types Of Knowledge ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Intentional Agency

AbstractThis paper analyzes three contrasting strategies for modeling intentional agency in contemporary analytic philosophy of mind and action, and draws parallels between them and similar strategies of scientific model-construction. Gricean modeling involves identifying primitive building blocks of intentional agency, and building up from such building blocks to prototypically agential behaviors. Analogical modeling is based on picking out an exemplary type of intentional agency, which is used as a model for other agential types. Theoretical modeling involves reasoning about intentional agency in terms of some domain-general framework of lawlike regularities, which involves no detailed reference to particular building blocks or exemplars of intentional agency (although it may involve coarse-grained or heuristic reference to some of them). Given the contrasting procedural approaches that they employ and the different types of knowledge that they embody, the three strategies are argued to provide mutually complementary perspectives on intentional agency.

scholarly journals Facing neoliberalism through dialogic spaces as sites of hope in science education: experiences of two self-organised communities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betzabé Torres-Olave ◽  
Paulina Bravo González
Keyword(s):  
Science Education ◽  
Science Teacher ◽  
Science Teachers ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Critical View ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Science Teacher Educators

AbstractIn this paper, we discuss the role of dialogue in two layers; first, in relation to two self-organised communities of science teachers in which we participated and, second, our process of coming together during our PhDs to analyse these communities, a dialogue about the dialogue. Regarding the first layer, there is much to learn from science teachers and science teacher educators when they are organised in sites of learning that can be spaces of hope, beginnings, and becoming, as is illustrated in the case of these two self-organised communities. Regarding the second layer, we discuss the value of dialogue and the possibilities it offers to develop ideas for science education in a way that might be democratising, emancipatory, and offering counter-narratives in a neoliberal Chile. By engaging in this dialogue revisiting the practices of our communities, we gained a sense of agency within the field of science education. However, we realised that we need to move towards a critical view within our communities, and more contextual and transformative science education by translating these sites of hope to our educational praxis today. For us, this relates both to developing a collective view of how to make science education provide pedagogical conditions and experiences for critical and engaged citizenship and thinking how we can act and engage with different settings in solidarity. One way of moving towards this is by developing a political knowledge of our disciplines through a collective scientific conscientisation. Our communities are the departure points to achieve this.

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