Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

What is the Human Sense of Agency, and is it Metacognitive?

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition

Abstract

Agency refers to an individual’s capacity to initiate and perform actions, and thus to bring about change, both in their own state, and in the state of the outside world. The importance of agency in human life cannot be understated. Social responsibility is built on the principle that there are “facts” of agency, on which individuals can generally agree. At the individual level, the experience of agency is considered a crucial part of normal mental life. Abnormal sense of agency (SoA)—such as in the well-documented “delusion of control”—is recognised as one of the key symptoms of mental disorders. Yet, beyond abnormalities of control that pertain to psychiatric conditions, normal SoA can be easily fooled. Errors in agency attribution and agency experience have received much attention in recent experimental literature. In everyday life, coincidental conjunctions between our actions and external events commonly occur. The fact that the SoA can be over or underestimated, or that judgements of agency can be wrong, testifies to a significant gap between what individuals think or believe their control capabilities are, and what these capabilities really are. The ability to experience these computations as the causes driving and shaping our actions may account for our ability to correct our behaviours when, precisely, they seem to escape our control. In this sense, any reliable theory about human agency must explain how we can sometimes be deluded about our own agency, but also must account for why we are not deluded all the time. In this chapter, we first identify which signals may contribute to an SoA, and how they might be integrated. We will ask whether human cognition of agency is best analysed as an experience or as an inference. We evaluate the existing data in relation to two contrasting accounts for agency, namely prospective versus purely retrospective approaches. We draw on two major classes of data throughout: psychological data that aims to capture the experience of agency, and physiological data that aims to identify the neural basis of this experience. Finally, we will consider whether the human SoA should really be called ‘metacognitive’. In particular, we directly compare key features of metacognition of agency with perceptual metacognition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 189.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 249.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Aarts H, Custers R, Wegner DM (2005) On the inference of personal authorship: enhancing experienced agency by priming effect information. Conscious Cogn 14:439–458

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. Ackerman JM, Nocera CC, Bargh JA (2010) Incidental haptic sensations influence social judgments and decisions. Science 328:1712–1715

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Banks WP, Isham EA (2009) We infer rather than perceive the moment we decided to act. Psychol Sci 20:17–21

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Berti A, Bottini G, Gandola M et al (2005) Shared cortical anatomy for motor awareness and motor control. Science 309:488–491

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Blakemore S-J, Frith CD, Wolpert DM (2001) The cerebellum is involved in predicting the sensory consequences of action. NeuroReport 12:1879–1884

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Blakemore S-J, Sirigu A (2003) Action prediction in the cerebellum and in the parietal lobe. Exp Brain Res 153:239–245

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  7. Bobak M, Pikhart H, Rose R et al (2000) Socioeconomic factors, material inequalities, and perceived control in self-rated health: cross-sectional data from seven post-communist countries. Soc Sci Med 51:1343–1350

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  8. Castiello U, Paulignan Y, Jeannerod M (1991) Temporal dissociation of motor responses and subjective awareness a study in normal subjects. Brain 114:2639–2655

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Chambon V, Haggard P (2013) 14 Premotor or ldeomotor: how does the experience of action come about? Action Sci Found Emerg Discipl 359

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chambon V, Haggard P (2012) Sense of control depends on fluency of action selection, not motor performance. Cognition

    Google Scholar 

  11. Chambon V, Wenke D, Fleming SM et al (2013) An online neural substrate for sense of agency. Cereb Cortex 23:1031–1037

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  12. Charles L, van Opstal F, Marti S, Dehaene S (2013) Distinct brain mechanisms for conscious versus subliminal error detection. NeuroImage

    Google Scholar 

  13. David N, Cohen MX, Newen A et al (2007) The extrastriate cortex distinguishes between the consequences of one’s own and others’ behavior. Neuroimage 36:1004–1014

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. David N, Newen A, Vogeley K (2008) The “sense of agency” and its underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms. Conscious Cogn 17:523–534

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. David N, Stenzel A, Schneider TR, Engel AK (2011) The feeling of agency: empirical indicators for a pre-reflective level of action awareness. Front, Psychol 2

    Google Scholar 

  16. De Biran M (1841) Oeuvres philosophiques. Ladrange

    Google Scholar 

  17. Dehaene S, Naccache L, Le Clec’H G et al (1998) Imaging unconscious semantic priming. Nature 395:597–600

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  18. Desmurget M, Reilly KT, Richard N et al (2009) Movement intention after parietal cortex stimulation in humans. Science 324:811

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  19. Desmurget M, Sirigu A (2009) A parietal-premotor network for movement intention and motor awareness. Trends Cogn Sci 13:411–419. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.08.001

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  20. Engbert K, Wohlschläger A, Haggard P (2008) Who is causing what? The sense of agency is relational and efferent-triggered. Cognition 107:693–704

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Farrer C, Franck N, Georgieff N et al (2003) Modulating the experience of agency: a positron emission tomography study. Neuroimage 18:324–333

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  22. Farrer C, Frey SH, Van Horn JD et al (2008) The angular gyrus computes action awareness representations. Cereb Cortex 18:254–261

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Farrer C, Frith CD (2002) Experiencing oneself vs another person as being the cause of an action: the neural correlates of the experience of agency. Neuroimage 15:596–603

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Fink GR, Marshall JC, Halligan PW et al (1999) The neural consequences of conflict between intention and the senses. Brain 122:497–512

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  25. Fogassi L, Ferrari PF, Gesierich B et al (2005) Parietal lobe: from action organization to intention understanding. Science 308:662–667

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  26. Fotopoulou A, Tsakiris M, Haggard P et al (2008) The role of motor intention in motor awareness: an experimental study on anosognosia for hemiplegia. Brain 131(12):3432–3442

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  27. Fourneret P, Jeannerod M (1998) Limited conscious monitoring of motor performance in normal subjects. Neuropsychologia 36:1133–1140

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  28. Franck N, Farrer C, Georgieff N et al (2001) Defective recognition of one’s own actions in patients with schizophrenia. Am J Psychiatry 158:454–459

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  29. Fried I, Mukamel R, Kreiman G (2011) Internally generated preactivation of single neurons in human medial frontal cortex predicts volition. Neuron 69:548–562

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  30. Frith CD, Blakemore SJ, Wolpert DM (2000) Abnormalities in the awareness and control of action. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 355:1771–1788

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  31. Gallagher S (2004) Neurocognitive models of schizophrenia: a neurophenomenological critique. Psychopathology 37:8–19

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  32. Galvin SJ, Podd JV, Drga V, Whitmore J (2003) Type 2 tasks in the theory of signal detectability: discrimination between correct and incorrect decisions. Psychon Bull Rev 10:843–876

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  33. Garbarini F, Rabuffetti M, Piedimonte A et al (2012) “Moving” a paralysed hand: bimanual coupling effect in patients with anosognosia for hemiplegia. Brain 135:1486–1497. doi:10.1093/brain/aws015

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  34. Gergely G, Bekkering H, Király I (2002) Developmental psychology: rational imitation in preverbal infants. Nature 415:755

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  35. Haggard P, Clark S, Kalogeras J (2002) Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nat Neurosci 5:382–385

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  36. Haggard P, Libet B (2001) Conscious intention and brain activity. J Conscious Stud 8:47–64

    Google Scholar 

  37. Haggard P, Chambon V (2012) Sense of agency. Curr Biol 22:390–392

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Hommel B, Musseler J, Aschersleben G, Prinz W (2001) The theory of event coding (TEC): a framework for perception and action planning. Behav Brain Sci 24:849–877

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  39. Hume D (1978) A treatise of human nature [1739]. Br Moralists 1650–1800

    Google Scholar 

  40. Johnson H, van Beers RJ, Haggard P (2002) Action and awareness in pointing tasks. Exp Brain Res 146:451–459

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  41. Koechlin E, Ody C, Kouneiher F (2003) The architecture of cognitive control in the human prefrontal cortex. Science 302:1181–1185. doi:10.1126/science.1088545

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  42. Koriat A (1993) How do we know that we know? The accessibility model of the feeling of knowing. Psychol Rev 100:609

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  43. Koriat A (2012) The subjective confidence in one’s knowledge and judgements: some. Found Metacognition 213

    Google Scholar 

  44. Leube DT, Knoblich G, Erb M et al (2003) The neural correlates of perceiving one’s own movements. Neuroimage 20:2084–2090

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  45. Libet B, Gleason CA, Wright EW, Pearl DK (1983) Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential). The unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain. J Neurol 106(Pt 3):623–642

    Google Scholar 

  46. Linser K, Goschke T (2007) Unconscious modulation of the conscious experience of voluntary control. Cognition 104:459–475

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  47. Logan GD, Crump MJC (2010) Cognitive illusions of authorship reveal hierarchical error detection in skilled typists. Science 330:683–686

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  48. Lynn MT, Berger CC, Riddle TA, Morsella E (2010) Mind control? Creating illusory intentions through a phony brain–computer interface. Conscious Cogn 19:1007–1012

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  49. MacDonald PA, Paus T (2003) The role of parietal cortex in awareness of self-generated movements: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Cereb Cortex 13:962–967

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  50. Marti S, Sackur J, Sigman M, Dehaene S (2010) Mapping introspection’s blind spot: reconstruction of dual-task phenomenology using quantified introspection. Cognition 115:303–313. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.01.003

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  51. Metcalfe J, Greene MJ (2007) Metacognition of agency. J Exp Psychol Gen 136:184–199. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.136.2.184

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  52. Miall RC, Wolpert DM (1996) Forward models for physiological motor control. Neural Netw 9:1265–1279

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  53. Michotte A (1963) The perception of causality

    Google Scholar 

  54. Miele DB, Wager TD, Mitchell JP, Metcalfe J (2011) Dissociating neural correlates of action monitoring and metacognition of agency. J Cogn Neurosci 23:3620–3636

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  55. Miller EK, Cohen JD (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annu Rev Neurosci 24:167–202. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.24.1.167

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  56. Moore JW, Ruge D, Wenke D et al (2010) Disrupting the experience of control in the human brain: pre-supplementary motor area contributes to the sense of agency. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci 277:2503–2509

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Morsella E, Wilson LE, Berger CC et al (2009) Subjective aspects of cognitive control at different stages of processing. Atten Percept Psychophys 71:1807–1824. doi:10.3758/APP.71.8.1807

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  58. Muñoz SA (2010) Metarepresentational versus control theories of metacognition. Work. Twenty-Fourth AAAI Conference of Artificial Intelligence

    Google Scholar 

  59. Nahab FB, Kundu P, Gallea C et al (2011) The neural processes underlying self-agency. Cereb Cortex 21:48–55

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  60. Pacherie E (2007) The sense of control and the sense of agency. Psyche (Stuttg) 13:1–30

    Google Scholar 

  61. Pacherie E (2008) The phenomenology of action: a conceptual framework. Cognition 107:179–217

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  62. Sato A (2009) Both motor prediction and conceptual congruency between preview and action-effect contribute to explicit judgment of agency. Cognition 110:74–83

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  63. Sato A, Yasuda A (2005) Illusion of sense of self-agency: discrepancy between the predicted and actual sensory consequences of actions modulates the sense of self-agency, but not the sense of self-ownership. Cognition 94:241–255

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  64. Schlaghecken F, Eimer M (2000) A central-peripheral asymmetry in masked priming. Percept Psychophys 62:1367–1382

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  65. Schlaghecken F, Rowley L, Sembi S et al (2007) The negative compatibility effect: a case for self-inhibition. Adv Cogn Psychol 3:227

    Article  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  66. Schnell K, Heekeren K, Schnitker R et al (2007) An fMRI approach to particularize the frontoparietal network for visuomotor action monitoring: detection of incongruence between test subjects’ actions and resulting perceptions. Neuroimage 34:332–341

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  67. Slachevsky A, Pillon B, Fourneret P et al (2001) Preserved adjustment but impaired awareness in a sensory-motor conflict following prefrontal lesions. J Cogn Neurosci 13:332–340

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  68. Synofzik M, Thier P, Lindner A (2006) Internalizing agency of self-action: perception of one’s own hand movements depends on an adaptable prediction about the sensory action outcome. J Neurophysiol 96:1592–1601

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  69. Synofzik M, Vosgerau G, Newen A (2008) Beyond the comparator model: a multifactorial two-step account of agency. Conscious Cogn 17:219–239. doi:10.1016/j.concog.2007.03.010

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  70. Tsakiris M, Costantini M, Haggard P (2008) The role of the right temporo-parietal junction in maintaining a coherent sense of one’s body. Neuropsychologia 46:3014–3018

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  71. Tsakiris M, Haggard P, Franck N et al (2005) A specific role for efferent information in self-recognition. Cognition 96:215–231

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  72. Vosgerau G, Newen A (2007) Thoughts, motor actions, and the self. Mind Lang 22:22–43

    Article  Google Scholar 

  73. Waszak F, Cardoso-Leite P, Hughes G (2012) Action effect anticipation: neurophysiological basis and functional consequences. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 36:943–959

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  74. Wegner D (2002) The illusion of conscious will. MA, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  75. Wegner D, Sparrow B, Winerman L (2004) Vicarious agency: experiencing control over the movements of others. J Pers Soc Psychol 86:838

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  76. Wegner D, Wheatley T (1999) Apparent mental causation: sources of the experience of will. Am Psychol 54:480–492

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  77. Wenke D, Fleming SM, Haggard P (2010) Subliminal priming of actions influences sense of control over effects of action. Cognition 115:26–38

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  78. Wolpert DM, Ghahramani Z, Jordan MI (1995) An internal model for sensorimotor integration. Sci-NEW YORK THEN Wash- 1880–1880

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

PH was supported by an ESRC Professorial Fellowship, by EU FP7 project VERE (WP8), and by ERC Advanced Grant HUMVOL.

VC was supported by a postdoctoral bursary from the Fyssen foundation, and by EU FP7 project VERE (WP8).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. INSERM, ENS, Paris, France

    Valerian Chambon

  2. Max-Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany

    Elisa Filevich

  3. ICN-UCL, London, UK

    Patrick Haggard

Authors
  1. Valerian Chambon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Elisa Filevich
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Patrick Haggard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patrick Haggard .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, USA

    Stephen M. Fleming

  2. Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus C, Denmark

    Christopher D. Frith

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Chambon, V., Filevich, E., Haggard, P. (2014). What is the Human Sense of Agency, and is it Metacognitive?. In: Fleming, S., Frith, C. (eds) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Metacognition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-45190-4_14

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation