Agency evaluation in motor cognition: Action’s control-effectiveness feedback and its environmental context enhances motor performance

A perceptual effect that is temporally contiguous on one’s action holds important information about one’s control over the action and its effect (“I did that”). Previous work has demonstrated the impact of such immediate action-effect on perception and motor processes. In the current study, we investigated the promoting impact of control-effectiveness feedback – an effect that is temporally contiguous on one’s action – on motor performance. In two experiments, participants performed a rapid movement towards a target location on a computer monitor and clicked on the target with their mouse key as quickly and accurately as possible. Their click response triggered a perceptual effect (a brief white flash) on the target. We manipulated control-effectiveness feedback by employing varying levels of action-effect delay in two experimental contexts - long versus short lag distributions. Such design enabled us to investigate the impact of both the recent action-effect delay and its experimental context on motor performance. The findings demonstrate that control-effectiveness feedback (e.g., temporally contiguous perceptual effect) enhances motor performance as indicated by both endpoint precision and movement speed. In addition, a substantial effect of the experimental context was observed. Namely, we found enhanced motor performance, especially after an ambiguous (intermediate) action-effect delay when it was sampled from a short compared to long lag distribution; a pattern that supports the contribution of both ‘control’ expectations and control-feedback on motor performance. We discuss findings in the context of previous work on control-effectiveness and movement control and their potential implications for clinicians and digital interface developers.

Earlier Effects Are More Often Perceived as One’s Own Action Effects

When changes occur in our environment, we usually know whether we caused these changes by our actions or not. Yet, this feeling of authorship for changes — the so-called sense of agency (SoA) — depends on the temporal relationship between action and resulting change (i.e., effect). More precisely, SoA might depend on whether the effect occurs temporally predictable, and on the duration of the delay between action and effect. In previous studies, SoA was measured either explicitly, asking for the perceived control over external stimuli, or implicitly by measuring a characteristic temporal judgement bias (intentional binding, i.e., a shortening of the perceived interval between action and effect). We used a novel paradigm for investigating explicit SoA more directly by asking participants in a forced-choice paradigm whether they caused a temporally predictable or a temporally unpredictable effect by their action. Additionally, we investigated how the temporal contiguity of the effects influenced the participants’ explicit SoA. In two experiments (48 participants each), there was no influence of temporal predictability on explicit SoA. Temporally predictable and unpredictable effects were equally often rated as own effects. Yet, effects after shorter delays were more often perceived as own effects than effects after longer delays. These findings are in line with previous results concerning the influence of effect delay on other explicit measures of SoA and concluding that explicit SoA is stronger for early effects.

The effect of delay on the expression of the t6/t6 genotype

In vivo, t6/t6 embryos are developmentally arrested between gestation days 5·5 (short-eggcylinder stage) and 6·75 (long-egg-cylinder stage). In the present series of studies we used both in vivo and in vitro blastocyst delay followed by in vitro outgrowth to determine whether the t6/t6 lethality is time- or stage-specific. The results show that the t6/t6 genome is expressed differently in vivo and in vitro and that the in vitro expression of the homozygous t6 genome differs with different methods of effecting developmental delay. Although delay increases the life span of t6/t6 embryos it does not alter the stage of lethality. One method used to effect delay (ovariectomy) causes the t6/t6 embryos to remain as blastocysts for a significantly longer period of time than their wild-type littermates when placed into outgrowth medium. This distinction provides a unique method for obtaining a sample composed entirely of t6/t6 embryos at a stage prior to the lethal period.