Sense of Agency remains unchanged despite Motor Adaptation

The Sense of Agency (SoA), the subjective feeling of controlling one’s actions and theirconsequences, has been explained through two primary theoretical frameworks: thecomparator model and retrospective views. While the comparator model focuses on theconsistency between the sensory prediction generated through internal models and theactual sensory input, retrospective theories emphasize the detection of regularitiesbetween one’s own actions and sensory input and self-attribution based on thisinformation. However, how the two types of processes contribute to the exploration ofcontrol remains unclear. In the present study, we explored this question by examining theeffect of updating the internal model for motor control on the SoA in a control detectiontask. Participants first adapted to a rotation of visual feedback while controlling a dot onthe screen, then conducted free movements to choose the dot they felt they could controlmost effectively among five dots with different rotation angles (i.e., the control detectiontask). Experiment 1 used a tracking task for the motor adaptation, while Experiment 2used a reaching task to replicate the result of Experiment 1. The results of the twoexperiments showed that the motor adaptation in both tasks did not have a significanteffect on the control detection task. In other words, it is likely that the updating of theinternal model only has a minimal effect on the control detection. Our findings indicatedthat the regularity detection process is likely to dominate in the exploration of the SoA,compared to the predictive process, which requires the internal model to generatepredictions for each movement. These findings provide important insights forunderstanding the sense of agency in the context of exploratory behaviors within the novelenvironments.