Sense of Agency as a Function of Prediction Errors and Uncertainties: Free Energy Model and Experimental Evidence

Abstract

Sense of agency is the sense that one is the cause of an action and controls the events in the outside world. We propose a mathematical model that explains the sense of agency using information theoretic free energy. The model predicts that the prediction error and uncertainty interactively affect the sense of agency. In an experiment in which the prediction error and observation uncertainty were manipulated using response delay and number of sensory signals from different sensory modalities, we observed an interaction between response delay and number of sensory signals. The results support the model prediction suggesting that, when the prediction error is sufficiently small, uncertainty reduces the sense of agency; by contrast, when the prediction error is sufficiently large, uncertainty increases the sense of agency. These model-based findings provide a guide for optimizing operational response to prevent lack of sense of agency when the response delay varies.