Sense of agency promotes recognition memory: the role of self-referential processing

Recent research has explored whether sense of agency (SoA) over to-be-remembered items enhances performance in recognition memory tasks, and what the underlying mechanisms might be. The present study systematically investigates the role of self-referential processing in this improvement. Building on the Comparator Model of SoA, we manipulated SoA from two perspectives: retrospective inference (action-outcome consistency) in Experiment 1 and 2, and prospective inference (action volition) in Experiment 3 and 4. In experiment 1 and 3, we replicated the effect of SoA on recognition memory with a simple recognition task. The results showed that stronger induced SoA significantly improved recognition memory performance. Experiment 3 and 4 used a Remember/Know (R/K) memory paradigm, measured recollection/familiarity performance, and recorded Event-related potentials (ERP). SoA influenced R/K performance in Experiment 4, as evidenced by both behavioral and ERP results, specifically the R performance, FN400 and LPC components were all higher with volition induced SoA. In contrast, Experiment 2 did not reveal a significant R/K improvement effect. These findings suggest that voluntary actions, which carry more self-referential information as compared to involuntary actions, facilitate the SoA and enhance recognition memory. However, the self-referential information associated with action-outcome consistency in Experiment 2 might not have been sufficiently detectable, and its effect may have disappeared when recognition memory was measured using the R/K paradigm, which likely requires more cognitive resources.