Feeling in Control: The Role of Cardiac Timing in the Sense of Agency
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Feeling in Control: The Role of Cardiac Timing in the Sense of Agency Aleksandra M. Herman 1
&
Manos Tsakiris 1,2
Received: 21 January 2020 / Accepted: 20 July 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The sense of agency describes the experience of controlling one’s body to cause desired effects in the world. We explored whether this is influenced by interoceptive processes. Specifically, we investigated whether the sense of agency changes depending on where, in the cardiac cycle (systole or diastole), the action was executed and where the outcome of the action occurred. In two experiments, participants completed decision-making task to win/lose money. Explicit (ratings of control) and implicit (temporal judgement) measures of agency were differentially affected by cardiovascular state. Implicit agency scores were affected by the cardiac phase at the point of action execution. Explicit ratings of control were affected by the type of (free vs. instructed) and by outcome valence (win vs. lose). The time of the action was uniformly distributed across the cardiac cycle. These results show interoceptive impact on agency, but that cardiac cycle may affect explicit and implicit agency differently. Keywords Sense of agency . Intentional binding . Cardiac arousal . Interoception . Decision-making
Introduction The sense of agency (SoA) describes not only the experience of having a body but also the experience of controlling one’s body to cause desired effects in the environment (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009). Synofzik, Vosgerau, & Newen (2008) suggested that SoA can be described at two distinct levels. While the highlevel SoA (i.e., ‘judgement of control’) is conceptualized explicitly through one’s own interpretation of one’s agency, the lowlevel SoA (i.e., ‘feeling of control’) is experienced nonconceptually and pre-reflectively (Synofzik et al., 2008). In the experimental setting, the SoA can be measured explicitly by asking individuals whether they felt they caused an action or how much in control they felt (Haggard & Tsakiris, 2009) or, alternatively, by implicitly looking at distortions in time Handling Editor: Wendy Berry Mendes Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-020-00013-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Aleksandra M. Herman [email protected] 1
Lab of Action and Body, School of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK
2
The Warburg Institute, University of London, London, UK
perception associated with agency—an effect known as intentional binding (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). Intentional binding refers to the temporal attraction between an action (e.g., pressing a light switch) and its effects (i.e., light), so that if an action is followed by an outcome, the two events are perceived temporally closer together than in the control condition when the action and the outcome occur independently. A recent theoretical model has proposed that in
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