The Active Sensing of Control Difference

Abstract

In everyday life, people control objects in the world around them to varying degrees. The processes people actively use to establish their control, while interacting with an environment containing large ambiguity, remain unknown. This study examines how people explore their control over the environment and how they detect small differences in control among objects. In the experimental task, participants moved three dots on a screen and identified one dot over which the level of control is different from that of the other two. The results support a two-step behavior mechanism underlying the sensing of control difference: People first explore their overall control in the environment, and then the results of the initial exploration are used to selectively tune the direction (i.e., either more or less) of the detected control difference, ensuring efficient and rapid detection of the type of control difference that is potentially important for further action selections.

Illusions of control without delusions of grandeur

“…Intriguingly, observers in perceptual tasks tend to have poorer insight into their ability to judge absence over presence ( Kanai et al, 2010 ; Meuwese et al, 2014 ), possibly because the former places particular demands on metacognitive self-monitoring mechanisms ( Mazor et al, 2020 ). This asymmetry may have important implications for how agents actively monitor what they cannot control in certain kinds of environments ( Wen et al, 2020 ).…”

Illusions of control without delusions of grandeur

“…Intriguingly, observers in perceptual tasks tend to have poorer insight into their ability to judge absence over presence (Kanai et al, 2010;Meuwese et al, 2014), possibly because the former places particular demands on metacognitive self-monitoring mechanisms (Mazor et al, 2020). This asymmetry may have important implications for how agents actively monitor what they cannot control in certain kinds of environments (Wen et al, 2020).…”

Modified sensory feedback enhances the sense of agency during continuous body movements in virtual reality

“…However, recent studies have shown that the sense of agency is more than a passive awareness. Feeling in control reduces the reaction time of executing an action, and increases the frequency of action 18 , 19 . Furthermore, a recent study showed that when people controlled a virtual limb and felt that the virtual limb was a part of their own body, the movements of their real limb was “attracted” to the movements of the virtual limb 20 .…”

“…Prediction errors reduce the sense of agency, and cause the updating of the internal model for motor control. The sense of agency is also considered as an internal reward for voluntary motor control 18 , 19 . …”