Elsevier

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 21, Issue 4, December 2012, Pages 1748-1753
Consciousness and Cognition

Short Communication
Exploring implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2012.10.005Get rights and content
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Abstract

Sense of agency refers to the sense of initiating and controlling actions in order to influence events in the outside world. Recently, a distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency has been proposed, analogous to distinctions found in other areas of cognition, notably learning. However, there is yet no strong evidence supporting separable implicit and explicit components of sense of agency. The so-called ‘Perruchet paradigm’ offers one of the few convincing demonstrations of separable implicit and explicit learning systems. We adopted this approach to evaluate the implicit–explicit distinction in the context of a simple task in which outcomes were probabilistically caused by actions. In line with our initial predictions, we found evidence of a dissociation. We discuss the implications of this result for theories of sense of agency.

Highlights

► A distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of agency has been proposed. ► The validity of this distinction is unclear. ► We tested whether these aspects of agency are differentially affected by sequential patterns of action-outcome relations. ► We found evidence for a dissociation between implicit and explicit aspects of sense of agency. ► We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of sense of agency.

Keywords

Sense of agency
Agency
Voluntary action
Volition
Feeling of agency
Judgement of agency
Dissociation
Learning
Consciousness

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