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Project

The Source of Selfhood: Experimental and Phenomenological Investigations Into the Sense of Agency

This doctoral proposal consists of three projects focusing on Spizzo’s effect, a phenomenon of extended agency arising in sensorimotor synchronization tasks. In synchronizing rhythmic movements to a visual metronome, agents feel the sense of agency that normally accompanies movements extending to control the pulses of a visual metronome. The extension arises once agents have reached synchronization with the pulses and occurs in spite of agents’ knowledge that the metronome operates independently of their own movement.

Spizzo’s effect is hypothesized to hinge on the dynamics of sensorimotor coordination in synchronization tasks. This hypothesis was tested in Project 1, which used finger tapping to a visual metronome as synchronization task. The dynamics of tapping was characterized by undergoing the series of taps to a novel procedure of monofractal classification. Once classified, the series were compared with the concurrent verbal reports on agency provided by participants. The comparison revealed that the presence of any correlation structure in the series is both necessary and sufficient for the effect to arise. The correlation structure in a series operationalizes the coordination of tapping with pulses; therefore, the effect can be reliably stated as hinging on sensorimotor coordination.

Project 1 shows how agency in tapping extends to the control of metronome pulses, leaving unexamined how agency arises in tapping. Project 2 addresses this issue with an exercise in phenomenology. From a phenomenological analysis of tapping, the project generalizes the issue of how agency arises in any act. The generalization is conducted by retracing in human development the conditions that allow agency to arise. Specifically, the notion of sense of agency subsumes the twofold experience of a self engaging in action and, concurrently, controlling the events concomitant to the action. Whereas the sense of control over the events hinges on the dynamics of sensorimotor coordination (Project 1), the sense of a self engaging in action hinges, first, on the continuity of kinesthesia and, second, on the permanence of selfhood. The continuity of kinesthesia can be inferred from the consistency of the involved kinematics, which, in turn, can be observed directly. The permanent selfhood, on the other hand, is a consequence of the rhythmic coordination patterns that humans encounter since the earliest stages of development (viz. in utero life).

Finally, Project 3 aims to investigate extended agency in oculomotor events such as saccades. By considering saccades, the arising of Spizzo’s effect could result independent of any tactility and effector: A further confirmation that the effect hinges directly on the dynamics of sensorimotor coordination.

Date:1 Apr 2013 →  19 Apr 2023
Keywords:Sense of Agency, Fractal Analysis, Sensorimotor Coordination
Disciplines:Human experimental psychology, Philosophical psychology, Mathematical psychology
Project type:PhD project