Minimal conditions for the emergence of a vicarious sense of agency toward artificial agents
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View abstract on PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.Vicarious sense of agency (SoA) emerges toward artificial agents when users perceive action effects, even without performing actions. This feeling relies on later cognitive processes, distinct from self-agency mechanisms.
Area Of Science
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Artificial Intelligence
Background
- Sense of Agency (SoA) is the feeling of control over one's actions and their outcomes.
- Vicarious SoA can extend to actions performed by artificial agents.
- Understanding the minimal conditions for vicarious SoA is crucial for designing intuitive AI interactions.
Purpose Of The Study
- To investigate the minimal conditions for developing vicarious SoA towards artificial agents.
- To determine if vicarious SoA emerges solely from perceiving action effects, without motor execution.
- To explore the role of expectancy and learned associations in vicarious SoA.
Main Methods
- Two experiments utilizing the Intentional Binding (IB) task, a behavioral measure of SoA.
- Experiment 1 (Solo): Participants judged self-generated tones.
- Experiment 2: Participants judged tones produced by an artificial agent (computer-generated keypress) without motor action, measuring proximal and distal effects.
- Electroencephalography (EEG) recorded neural activity, focusing on N1 and P2 components.
Main Results
- The IB effect consistently emerged in both experiments, indicating SoA.
- Vicarious SoA was established when participants had access to the proximal action effect, even without performing the action.
- Neural analysis suggested self-agency relies partly on N1 (motor predictions), while vicarious agency involves later cognitive processes indexed by P2.
Conclusions
- Perceiving action effects, particularly proximal ones, is sufficient for developing vicarious SoA towards artificial agents, even without motor involvement.
- Individual and vicarious SoA, while behaviorally similar (IB effect), may involve distinct neural mechanisms.
- Findings inform the design of AI systems that foster a sense of agency and control.
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