The Cue-integrated Sense of Agency – as Operationalized in Experiments – is not a (Multisensory) Perceptual Effect, but is a Judgment Effect

Abstract

According to the Cue integration theory, the Sense of agency (SoA) is a resultant of both motor as well as non-motor cues, and these multiple cues are integrated based on their reliability or invariance estimate. However, the cue integration theory fails to make a distinction between perception and judgment, when it attributes (multisensory) perceptual character to non-motor cues like affect, effort, competition, fluency, familiarity, expertise, sleep, meditation, primes, and previews of actions, etc. Thus, my paper criticizes the experimentally operationalized cueintegrated SoA by arguing that: (a) there is uncertainty in the cue-integrated SoA experimental operationalization (making the participants prone to judgment effects); (b) the cue integration theory faces a problem of explaining how non-motor cues acquire interface, intentionality, and accuracy about agency; (c) the SoA reports are influenced by heuristic responding pattern (under uncertainty); (d) the cue-integrated SoA operationalizations had 'inaccuracy standard' for measuring perception of agency; (e) under certainty, the (nonveridical) SoA reports might not have occurred at all. This paper concludes that the reported heuristic responses (under uncertainty) of SoA can be parsimoniously accounted by compositionality nature of thought/judgment rather than the cue-integrated perception, and thus, the cue-integrated SoA reports are not instances of perceptions but are judgments.The sense of agency (SoA) is characterized as a perception/feeling of being an agent. Initially, the SoA is hypothesized to be based on motor processes, particularly the comparator process of motor control (Blakemore, Wolpert, and Frith, 2000; Tsakiris, Haggard, Franck, Mainy, and Sirigu, 2005; Tim Bayne, 2008). However, some researchers like Daniel Wegner (2004) produced empirical evidence that the SoA is also generated by the non-motor processes, such as causal attribution.Thus, in recent times, the SoA has come to be characterized as based on an integration of both motor as well as non-motor processeswhich has come to be called as the multiple cue integration theory or optimal cue integration theory (Synofzik, Vosgerau and Newen, 2008; Vosgerau and Synofzik, 2012; Elisabeth Pacherie, 2013; Grüneberg, Kadone, and Suzuki, 2015), the cue integration theory, for short. Synofzik et al., (2008) illustrate the significance of the cue integration theory by saying that it "offers a genuinely new way how to reconcile previously unreconciled, seemingly dichotomous types of agency theories" (p.229).Similarly, Matthis Synofzik (2015) says that "this account already provides a unified and parsimonious framework for many heterogeneous and so far unconnected findings from recent studies of agency. For example, it connects agency studies using priming methods and agency studies focusing primarily on efference copy mechanisms" (p.297) [Italics added]. So, the crucial motivation behind the subscription to cue integration theory is that it reconciles the SoA studies those operationalized the ...

Measuring the Sense of Agency: A French Adaptation and Validation of the Sense of Agency Scale (F-SoAS)

“…This new approach can reconcile many heterogeneous and seemingly unrelated findings from recent SoA studies ( Synofzik, 2015 ). SoA appears to be a multisensory process; different cues are weighted, enabling a flexible, reliable experience of agency in different contexts ( Gallagher, 2012 ; for a contradictory review, see Reddy, 2019 ).…”

Sense of external agency is sustained by multisensory functional integration in the somatosensory cortex

“…Nevertheless, although we hypothesize that the time flexible self‐agency experience arises from the optimal multisensory integration occurring in a sensory area, this cue‐integrated SoA is probably not an instance of perception, but rather a composite of thought/judgment (Reddy, 2019).…”

“…Therefore, the rich complex functional interactions (expressed by the high local clustering coefficient) here observed in the primary somatosensory area as a function of consistency in attributing the effect to the self, can be assumed as the neural basis of the cue integration mechanism for inferring self-agency (Moore, Wegner, & Haggard, 2009). Actually, an area comprised within the Nevertheless, although we hypothesize that the time flexible selfagency experience arises from the optimal multisensory integration occurring in a sensory area, this cue-integrated SoA is probably not an instance of perception, but rather a composite of thought/judgment (Reddy, 2019).…”