BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

Experience of action depends on intention, not body movement: An experiment on memory for mens rea

Jensen, M. and Vagnoni, Eleonora and Overgaard, M. and Haggard, P. (2013) Experience of action depends on intention, not body movement: An experiment on memory for mens rea. Neuropsychologia 55 , pp. 122-127. ISSN 0028-3932.

Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

How do we know whether our own actions were voluntary or involuntary? Intentional theories of sense of agency suggest that we consciously perceive the intentions that accompany our actions, but reconstructive theories suggest that we perceive our actions only through the body movements and other effects that they produce. Intentions would then be mere confabulations, and not bona fide experiences. Previous work on voluntary action has focused on immediate experiences of authorship, and few studies have considered memory for voluntary actions. We devised an experiment in which both voluntary action and involuntary movement always occurred at the same time, but could either involve the same hand (congruent condition), or different hands (incongruent condition). When signals from the voluntary and involuntary movements involved different hands, they could therefore potentially interfere in memory. We found that recall of a voluntary action was unaffected by an incongruent involuntary movement. In contrast, recall of an involuntary movement was strongly influenced by an incongruent voluntary action. Our results demonstrate an “intentional capture” of body movement by voluntary actions, in support of intentional theories of agency, but contrary to reconstructive theories. When asked to recall both actions and movements, people's responses are shaped by memory of what they intended to do, rather than by how their body moved.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Volition, Intentional capture, Transcranial magnetic stimulation, Sense of agency
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 12 Aug 2013 11:46
Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:06
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/7995

Statistics

6 month trend
0Downloads
6 month trend
234Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item
Edit/View Item