A disruption in the sense of agency is the primary phenomenological feature of response to hypnotic suggestions but its cognitive basis remains elusive. Here we tested the proposal that distorted volition during response to suggestions arises from poor metacognition pertaining to the sources of one's control. Highly suggestible and control participants completed a motor task in which performance was reduced through surreptitious manipulations of cursor lag and stimuli speed. Highly suggestible participants did not differ from controls in performance or metacognition of performance, but their sense of agency was less sensitive to cursor lag manipulations, suggesting reduced awareness that their control was being manipulated. These results indicate that highly suggestible individuals have aberrant metacognition of agency and may be a valuable population for studying distortions in the sense of agency.

Previous research suggests that response time (RT) patterns in the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) differentially predict different features of mind wandering but it is unknown how they relate to meta-awareness of attentional states. We applied principal component analysis to blocks of non-target (go) trials prior to target (no-go) trials and attentional state and meta-awareness probes in the SART and identified three distinct patterns that replicated those observed in previous research. A stable response rate was associated with superior target performance, whereas RT acceleration prior to targets was associated with poorer target performance. Self-reported attentional state was not significantly predicted by any of the pattern components. By contrast, meta-awareness was independently associated with two distinct RT fluctuation patterns with evidence that each pattern was specifically related to either meta-awareness of off-task or on-task states. These results suggest that mind wandering and meta-awareness of attentional states have distinct and overlapping imprints on RT patterns in the SART. We conclude by highlighting implications of these results for introspective methods and the measurement of mind wandering.