scholarly journals A match does not make a sense: on the sufficiency of the comparator model for explaining the sense of agency

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorijn Zaadnoordijk ◽  
Tarek R Besold ◽  
Sabine Hunnius
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Comparator Model

scholarly journals Speaking with an alien voice: Flexible sense of agency during vocal production

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias K. Franken ◽  
Robert Hartsuiker ◽  
Petter Johansson ◽  
Lars Hall ◽  
Andreas Lind
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Feedback ◽  
Sensory Feedback ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Comparison Process ◽  
Vocal Production ◽  
Internal Representations ◽  
Normal Voice ◽  
Comparator Model ◽  
Joint Contribution

Speakers monitor auditory feedback during speech production in order to correct for speech errors. The comparator model proposes that this process is supported by comparing sensory feedback to internal predictions of the sensory consequences of articulation. Additionally, this comparison process is proposed to support the sense of agency over vocal output. The current study tests this hypothesis by asking whether mismatching auditory feedback leads to a decrease in the sense of agency as measured by speakers’ responses to pitch-shifted feedback. Participants vocalized while auditory feedback was unexpectedly and briefly pitch-shifted. In addition, in one block, the entire vocalization’s pitch was baseline-shifted (‘alien voice’), while it was not in the other block (‘normal voice’). Participants compensated for the pitch shifts even in the alien voice condition, suggesting that agency was flexible. This is problematic for the classic comparator model, where a mismatching feedback would lead to a loss of agency. Alternative models are discussed in light of these findings, including an adapted comparator model and the inferential account, which suggests that agency is inferred from the joint contribution of several multisensory sources of evidence. Together, these findings suggest that internal representations of one’s own voice are more flexible than often assumed.

scholarly journals A Delusion of Control - What happens to a sense of Agency in Schizophrenic patients?

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Vikram Thakur ◽  
◽  
Steven Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Action Selection ◽  
Frontal Lobes ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Causal Inferences ◽  
Control Brain ◽  
Step Model ◽  
Schizophrenic Patients ◽  
Comparator Model

The sense of agency is known to be disrupted in Schizophrenia. This article explores the transition from the comparator model to the two-step model of agency, in order to review the paper ‘In and out of control: brain mechanisms linking fluency of action selection to self-agency in patients with Schizophrenia’1. A sense of agency involves using retrospective cues to make causal inferences, but this paper also introduces a new, prospective aspect. This paper shows that subliminal priming, a prospective cue, increases the reported sense of agency over a subsequent action outcome. It also shows that in schizophrenic patients, retrospective cues had more of an influence on their reported sense of agency, while conversely, prospective cues had less influence. This may reflect a greater reliance on retrospective cues in schizophrenia, which could be one of the underlying factors for some of the delusions seen in schizophrenia. Using fMRI measurements during the task, results suggest that angular gyrus activation reflects the experience of non-agency. In healthy controls, they saw altered connectivity between frontal areas and the angular gyrus associated with priming. In schizophrenic patients, there was no effect of priming on activation of the angular gyrus, or frontoparietal connectivity. In our review, we have introduced a putative schema that suggests that the action selection signals from the frontal lobes into the angular gyrus represent the prospective aspect of agency. This connection is disrupted In schizophrenia, and that may be why prospective agency is impaired.

scholarly journals The sense of agency does not evidence regulative control

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Beatriz Sorrentino Marques
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
Guidance Control ◽  
Regulative Control ◽  
Comparator Model

Libertarians assume that the sense of agency supports their belief in the agent’s ability to have done otherwise; however, they do not present arguments in favor of their assumption beyond introspection. Although agents may hold this belief, the mechanisms that give rise to the sense of agency—the comparator model and the perception of the relation between action and events in the environment—do not provide reasons to support it. Nonetheless, these mechanisms can help explain why agents hold the belief in the first place, and the investigation makes clear that the workings of the mechanisms that give rise to the sense of agency are compatible with determinism. Here, I will defend that a compatibilist explanation can be given as to why the sense of agency may seem to support libertarian beliefs. Hence, the sense of agency does not support the libertarian position in the free will debate; it is merely the pre-reflective experience of action as self-caused, and it is associated with control mechanisms.Keywords: Sense of agency, Regulative control, Incompatibilism, Comparator model, Guidance control.

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.

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 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 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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