The Influence of Sense of Agency on Implicit Learning: An Artificial Grammar Learning Task

Learning is most effective when individuals actively engage with new information, experimenting and integrating experiences to build meaningful understanding. Since it is recognized as an active rather than a passive process, several factors may influence how effectively individuals engage with new information. One such factor is the sense of agency, which refers to the subjective feeling of control over one’s actions and may be important for learning, as it transforms experience from passive observation into active understanding. The present study aims to investigate whether differences in the sense of agency will affect implicit learning by using an artificial grammar learning task. Participants were assigned to either an active condition, where they had full control over responses, or a passive condition, where they had much limited control. Subsequently, they rated their perceived control. Results revealed that participants in the active condition reported a stronger sense of agency and achieved higher accuracy than those in the passive condition. Both groups improved over repeated trials, but the active group consistently performed better than the passive group. Overall, our study demonstrated that a sense of agency plays an important role in shaping implicit learning, thus suggesting that learning is more effective when individuals feel in control of their actions.