Perceptual sensitivity, but not metacognitive monitoring, is shaped by increases and decreases in control

The sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over one's actions in the environment. It is typically thought to arise from comparisons between predicted action outcomes and actual sensory feedback. However, previous studies have shown that, in addition to this error detection process, a process that detects regularities between sensory input and one's actions is also involved in the emergence of the sense of agency. It remains unclear whether these distinct perceptual processes share a common metacognitive monitoring system. We addressed this question using a control change detection task, in which participants moved a single dot on a screen and judged whether their control over the dot changed during the trial, along with their confidence in each response. Detection of a decrease in control is expected to engage the error detection process underlying the sense of agency, whereas detection of an increase in control is expected to engage the regularity detection process. Across two experiments, the results showed that detection of decreases in control was more accurate than detection of increases, whereas the m-ratio did not differ between conditions. These findings suggest that the processes underlying the detection of increases and decreases in control are distinct, but may rely on a shared metacognitive monitoring system.