The effects of freedom of choice in action selection on perceived mental effort and the sense of agency

被引:38
作者
Barlas, Zeynep [1 ,2 ]
Hockley, William E. [2 ]
Obhi, Sukhvinder S. [2 ,3 ]
机构
[1] Bielefeld Univ, Social Cognit Syst Cluster Excellence Ctr Cognit, Bielefeld, Germany
[2] Wilfrid Laurier Univ, Dept Psychol, Ctr Cognit Neurosci, Waterloo, ON, Canada
[3] McMaster Univ, Social Brain Body & Act Lab, Dept Psychol Neurosci & Behav, Hamilton, ON, Canada
基金
加拿大自然科学与工程研究理事会;
关键词
Action selection; Choice; Perceived mental effort; Intentional binding; Outcome valence; Sense of agency; EMOTIONAL VALENCE; SELF; EXPERIENCE; AWARENESS; ABNORMALITIES; FEELINGS; IMPLICIT; FACT;
D O I
10.1016/j.actpsy.2017.09.004
中图分类号
B84 [心理学];
学科分类号
04 ; 0402 ;
摘要
Previous research showed that increasing the number of action alternatives enhances the sense of agency (SoA). Here, we investigated whether choice space could affect subjective judgments of mental effort experienced during action selection and examined the link between subjective effort and the SoA. Participants performed freely selected (among two, three, or four options) and instructed actions that produced pleasant or unpleasant tones. We obtained action-effect interval estimates to quantify intentional binding the perceived interval compression between actions and outcomes and feeling of control (FoC) ratings. Additionally, participants reported the degree of mental effort they experienced during action selection. We found that both binding and FoC were systematically enhanced with increasing choice-level. Outcome valence did not influence binding, while FoC was stronger for pleasant than unpleasant outcomes. Finally, freely chosen actions were associated with low subjective effort and slow responses (i.e., higher reaction times), and instructed actions were associated with high effort and fast responses. Although the conditions that yielded the greatest and least subjective effort also yielded the greatest and least binding and FoC, there was no significant correlation between subjective effort and SoA measures. Overall, our results raise interesting questions about how agency may be influenced by response selection demands (i.e., indexed by speed of responding) and subjective mental effort. Our work also highlights the importance of understanding how subjective mental effort and response speed are related to popular notions of fluency in response selection.
引用
收藏
页码:122 / 129
页数:8
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