Abstract
Our interactions with the environment are often accompanied by instances of experience where we feel in control of our actions. This agentive experience of initiating and controlling our action is known as the “Sense of Agency” (SoA), it plays an important role in influencing our self-experiences. This experience is not necessarily a true reflection of an underlying causal link between our actions and their outcomes, rather, our brains can easily be fooled into having an agentive experience for actions we did not perform. Based on findings from various researchers investigating SoA, the chapter looks at how our understanding of the sense of agency can be applied in real life. I start by summarizing what is SoA and our understanding of its mechanism, focusing on the role of control in influencing SoA. The second part of the chapter presents case studies where SoA has been used to solve some applied problems including Human–Computer interface, automation technology and virtual reality immersion therapy. Toward the end, we speculate on the possible areas in which our understanding of the sense of agency can be applied.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aoyagi, K., Wen, W., An, Q., Hamasaki, S., Yamakawa, H., Tamura, Y., Yamashita, A., & Asama, H. (2021). Modified sensory feedback enhances the sense of agency during continuous body movements in virtual reality. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 2553. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82154-y
Barlas, Z., & Kopp, S. (2018). Action choice and outcome congruency independently affect intentional binding and feeling of control judgments. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 12, 137. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00137
Berberian, B., Sarrazin, J.-C., Blaye, P. L., & Haggard, P. (2012). Automation technology and sense of control: A window on human agency. PLoS ONE, 7(3), e34075. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034075
Blain, B., & Sharot, T. (2021). Intrinsic reward: Potential cognitive and neural mechanisms. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 39, 113–118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.008
Botvinick, M., & Cohen, J. (1998). Rubber hands ‘feel’ touch that eyes see. Nature, 391(6669), 756–756. https://doi.org/10.1038/35784
Braun, N., Debener, S., Spychala, N., Bongartz, E., Sörös, P., Müller, H. H. O., & Philipsen, A. (2018). The senses of agency and ownership: A review. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 535. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00535
Buehner, M. J. (2012). Understanding the past, predicting the future: Causation, not intentional action, is the root of temporal binding. Psychological Science, 23(12), 1490–1497.
Cannon, J., O’Brien, A. M., Bungert, L., & Sinha, P. (2021). Prediction in autism spectrum disorder: A systematic review of empirical evidence. Autism Research: Official Journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 14(4), 604–630. https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2482
Caspar, E. A., Desantis, A., Dienes, Z., Cleeremans, A., & Haggard, P. (2016). The sense of agency as tracking control. PLoS ONE, 11(10), e0163892. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163892
Chambon, V., Moore, J. W., & Haggard, P. (2015). TMS stimulation over the inferior parietal cortex disrupts prospective sense of agency. Brain Structure & Function, 220(6), 3627–3639. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-014-0878-6
Chiarella, S., Makwana, M., Simione, L., Hartkamp, M., Calabrese, L., Raffone, A., & Srinivasan, N. (2020). Mindfulness meditation weakens attachment to self: Evidence from a self vs other binding task. Mindfulness, 11, 2411–2422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01457-9
Cioffi, M. C., Cocchini, G., Banissy, M. J., & Moore, J. W. (2017). Ageing and agency: Age-related changes in susceptibility to illusory experiences of control. Royal Society Open Science, 4(5), 161065. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.161065.
Cole, J., Crowle, S., Austwick, G., & Henderson Slater, D. (2009). Exploratory findings with virtual reality for phantom limb pain; from stump motion to agency and analgesia. Disability and Rehabilitation, 31(10), 846–854. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638280802355197
Coyle, D., Moore, J., Kristensson, P. O., Fletcher, P., & Blackwell, A. (2012). I did that! Measuring users’ experience of agency in their own actions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2025–2034). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208350.
Crane, L., Hearst, C., Ashworth, M., Davies, J., & Hill, E. L. (2021). Supporting newly identified or diagnosed autistic adults: An initial evaluation of an autistic-led programme. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 51(3), 892–905. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-020-04486-4
Desantis, A., Roussel, C., & Waszak, F. (2011). On the influence of causal beliefs on the feeling of agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 20(4), 1211–1220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2011.02.012
Dewey, J. A., & Knoblich, G. (2014). Do implicit and explicit measures of the sense of agency measure the same thing? PLoS ONE, 9(10), e110118. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0110118
Ebert, J. P., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Time warp: Authorship shapes the perceived timing of actions and events. Consciousness and Cognition, 19(1), 481–489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2009.10.002
Faivre, N., Vuillaume, L., Bernasconi, F., Salomon, R., Blanke, O., & Cleeremans, A. (2020). Sensorimotor conflicts alter metacognitive and action monitoring. Cortex; A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior, 124, 224–234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.12.001
Forstmann, B. U., Wolfensteller, U., Derrfuss, J., Neumann, J., Brass, M., Ridderinkhof, K. R., & von Cramon, D. Y. (2008). When the choice is ours: context and agency modulate the neural bases of decision-making. PLoS ONE, 3(4), e1899. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001899
Gallagher, S. (2012). Multiple aspects in the sense of agency. New Ideas in Psychology, 30, 15–31.
Garbarini, F., Mastropasqua, A., Sigaudo, M., Rabuffetti, M., Piedimonte, A., Pia, L., & Rocca, P. (2016). Abnormal sense of agency in patients with schizophrenia: evidence from bimanual coupling paradigm. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 10, 43. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00043
Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5(4), 382–385. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn827
Jaeger, C. B., Hymel, A. M., Levin, D. T., Biswas, G., Paul, N., & Kinnebrew, J. (2019). The interrelationship between concepts about agency and students’ use of teachable-agent learning technology. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 4(1), 14. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-019-0163-6
Jordan, J. S. (2003). Emergence of self and other in perception and action: an event-control approach. Consciousness and Cognition, 12(4), 633–646. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1053-8100(03)00075-8
Kilteni, K., Groten, R., & Slater, M. (2012). The sense of embodiment in virtual reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 21(4), 373–387. https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00124.
Kim, S. Y., & Kim, Y. Y. (2012). Mirror therapy for phantom limb pain. The Korean Journal of Pain, 25(4), 272–274. https://doi.org/10.3344/kjp.2012.25.4.272
Kobayashi, D., & Shinya, Y. (2018). Study of virtual reality performance based on sense of agency. In S. Yamamoto & H. Mori (Eds.), Human Interface and the Management of Information. Interaction, Visualization, and Analytics (pp. 381–394). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92043-6_32.
Kozáková, E., Bakštein, E., Havlíček, O., Bečev, O., Knytl, P., Zaytseva, Y., & Španiel, F. (2020). Disrupted sense of agency as a state marker of first-episode schizophrenia: A large-scale follow-up study. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 1489. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.570570
Kumar, D., & Srinivasan, N. (2013, August 2). Hierarchical control and sense of agency: Differential effects of control on implicit and explicit measures of agency. https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.4720.1283.
Kumar, D., & Srinivasan, N. (2014). Naturalizing sense of agency with a hierarchical event-control approach. PLoS ONE, 9(3), e92431. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0092431
Kumar, D., & Srinivasan, N. (2017). Multi-scale control influences sense of agency: Investigating intentional binding using event-control approach. Consciousness and Cognition, 49, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2016.12.014
Limerick, H., Coyle, D., & Moore, J. W. (2014). The experience of agency in human-computer interactions: A review. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 643. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00643
Lindahl, J. R., & Britton, W. B. (2019). “I have this feeling of not really being here”: Buddhist meditation and changes in sense of self. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(7–8), 157–183.
Lush, P., & Dienes, Z. (2019). Time perception and the experience of agency in meditation and hypnosis. PsyCh Journal, 8(1), 36–50. https://doi.org/10.1002/pchj.276
Maeda, T., Takahata, K., Muramatsu, T., Okimura, T., Koreki, A., Iwashita, S., Mimura, M., & Kato, M. (2013). Reduced sense of agency in chronic schizophrenia with predominant negative symptoms. Psychiatry Research, 209(3), 386–392. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2013.04.017
Metzinger, T. (2005). Out-of-body experiences as the origin of the concept of a ‘soul.’ Mind and Matter, 3, 57–84.
Moore, J. W. (2016). What is the sense of agency and why does it matter? Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1272. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01272
Moore, J. W., Middleton, D., Haggard, P., & Fletcher, P. C. (2012). Exploring implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 21(4), 1748–1753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.10.005
Nagamine, S., Hayashi, Y., Yano, S., & Kondo, T. (2016). An immersive virtual reality system for investigating human bodily self-consciousness. In 2016 Fifth ICT International Student Project Conference (ICT-ISPC) (pp. 97–100). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICT-ISPC.2016.7519245.
Obhi, S. S., & Hall, P. (2011). Sense of agency and intentional binding in joint action. Experimental Brain Research, 211(3), 655. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2675-2
Perruchet, P., Cleeremans, A., & Destrebecqz, A. (2006). Dissociating the effects of automatic activation and explicit expectancy on reaction times in a simple associative learning task. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(5), 955–965. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.32.5.955
Piccione, J., Collett, J., & De Foe, A. (2019). Virtual skills training: The role of presence and agency. Heliyon, 5(11), e02583. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02583
Porciello, G., Bufalari, I., Minio-Paluello, I., Di Pace, E., & Aglioti, S. M. (2018). The ‘enfacement’ illusion: A window on the plasticity of the self. Cortex, 104, 261–275. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.01.007
Ramachandran, V. S., & Rogers-Ramachandran, R. (1996). Synaesthesia in phantom limbs induced with mirrors. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 263, 377–386. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1996.0058.
Sato, Y., Kawase, T., Takano, K., Spence, C., & Kansaku, K. (2018). Body ownership and agency altered by an electromyographically controlled robotic arm. Royal Society Open Science, 5(5), 172170. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.172170
Sidarus, N., Haggard, P., & Beyer, F. (2018). How social contexts affect cognition: Mentalizing interferes with sense of agency during voluntary action. PsyAr**v. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wj3ep.
Suzuki, K., Garfinkel, S. N., Critchley, H. D., & Seth, A. K. (2013). Multisensory integration across exteroceptive and interoceptive domains modulates self-experience in the rubber-hand illusion. Neuropsychologia, 51(13), 2909–2917. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.08.014
Synofzik, M., Vosgerau, G., & Newen, A. (2008). Beyond the comparator model: A multifactorial two-step account of agency. Consciousness and Cognition, 17(1), 219–239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2007.03.010
Vaughn, M. (2018). Making sense of student agency in the early grades. The Phi Delta Kappan, 99(7), 62–66.
Wen, W., Kuroki, Y., & Asama, H. (2019). The sense of agency in driving automation. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2691. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02691
Winkler, P., Stiens, P., Rauh, N., Franke, T., & Krems, J. (2020). How latency, action modality and display modality influence the sense of agency: A virtual reality study. Virtual Reality, 24(3), 411–422. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-019-00403-y
Wolinsky, F. D., Wyrwich, K. W., Babu, A. N., Kroenke, K., & Tierney, W. M. (2003). Age, aging, and the sense of control among older adults: A longitudinal reconsideration. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 58(4), S212–S220. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/58.4.S212
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kumar, D. (2023). Human–Technology Interfaces: Did ‘I’ do it? Agency, Control, and why it matters. In: Mukherjee, S., Dutt, V., Srinivasan, N. (eds) Applied Cognitive Science and Technology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3966-4_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3966-4_12
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-99-3965-7
Online ISBN: 978-981-99-3966-4
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)