Predictive Mechanisms Are Not Involved the Same Way during Human-Human vs. Human-Machine Interactions: A Review <s> The sense of agency during joint actions with humanized automated systems <s> Every day we make attributions about how our actions and the actions of others cause consequences in the world around us. It is unknown whether we use the same implicit process in attributing causality when observing others' actions as we do when making our own. The aim of this research was to investigate the neural processes involved in the implicit sense of agency we form between actions and effects, for both our own actions and when watching others' actions. Using an interval estimation paradigm to elicit intentional binding in self-made and observed actions, we measured the EEG responses indicative of anticipatory processes before an action and the ERPs in response to the sensory consequence. We replicated our previous findings that we form a sense of implicit agency over our own and others' actions. Crucially, EEG results showed that tones caused by either self-made or observed actions both resulted in suppression of the N1 component of the sensory ERP, with no difference in suppression between consequences caused by observed actions compared with self-made actions. Furthermore, this N1 suppression was greatest for tones caused by observed goal-directed actions rather than non-action or non-goal-related visual events. This suggests that top-down processes act upon the neural responses to sensory events caused by goal-directed actions in the same way for events caused by the self or those made by other agents. <s> BIB001 </s> Predictive Mechanisms Are Not Involved the Same Way during Human-Human vs. Human-Machine Interactions: A Review <s> The sense of agency during joint actions with humanized automated systems <s> People may deny responsibility for negative consequences of their actions by claiming that they were "only obeying orders." The "Nuremberg defense" offers one extreme example, though it is often dismissed as merely an attempt to avoid responsibility. Milgram's classic laboratory studies reported widespread obedience to an instruction to harm, suggesting that social coercion may alter mechanisms of voluntary agency, and hence abolish the normal experience of being in control of one's own actions. However, Milgram's and other studies relied on dissembling and on explicit measures of agency, which are known to be biased by social norms. Here, we combined coercive instructions to administer harm to a co-participant, with implicit measures of sense of agency, based on perceived compression of time intervals between voluntary actions and their outcomes, and with electrophysiological recordings. In two experiments, an experimenter ordered a volunteer to make a key-press action that caused either financial penalty or demonstrably painful electric shock to their co-participant, thereby increasing their own financial gain. Coercion increased the perceived interval between action and outcome, relative to a situation where participants freely chose to inflict the same harms. Interestingly, coercion also reduced the neural processing of the outcomes of one's own action. Thus, people who obey orders may subjectively experience their actions as closer to passive movements than fully voluntary actions. Our results highlight the complex relation between the brain mechanisms that generate the subjective experience of voluntary actions and social constructs, such as responsibility. <s> BIB002
In an interesting study by BIB002 , the participants were wearing a glove with sensors on their right hand (hidden from vision) so that they could control a human-like robotic right hand that was placed in full view in front of them. The participants learnt during an association phase a given keypress (H or F key) would trigger a specific tone (a 400 or 600 Hz tone). In the robot homologous-tone congruent condition, the participant had to press either the H or F key whenever he or she wanted and the robotic hand immediately did the same action. The robot's key press triggered a tone which was congruent with the tone learnt in the association phase. In the robot homologoustone incongruent condition, the participant had to press one of the two keys whenever he or she wanted and the robotic hand immediately did the same action. However, the robot's key press triggered a tone which was incongruent with the tone learnt in the association phase. In the robot non-homologous-tone congruent condition, the participant had to press either the H or F key whenever he or she wanted but the robotic hand immediately did the opposite action. The robot's key press triggered a tone which was congruent with the tone learnt in the association phase. In the robot non-homologous-tone incongruent condition, "*"means that the robotic arm used in the mentioned study has the characteristics described at the top of the column (in the label). the participant had to press one of the two keys whenever he or she wanted but the robotic hand immediately did the opposite action. In addition, the robot's key press triggered a tone which was incongruent with the tone learnt in the association phase. The participant had to estimate the temporal interval between the key presses and the following tones. During the experiment, the electroencephalographic activity of the participant was recorded. The authors found that when the robot action was homologous to the participant action, the participants made more IB when the tone was congruent compared to when it was incongruent. This effect of congruency did not exist anymore when the robot action was incongruent with the participant action. This indicates that the association between a given action and its sensory consequence is not the only thing that matters for the sense of agency. In addition, the means used to realize the desired outcome is important. The authors proposed that the sense of agency was mainly informed by an online tracking control process that can predict the intermediate steps along the causal chain. When a disruption occurs, the sense of control over the other-generated action is hence reduced. In addition, the authors have found a N1 auditory component amplitude reduction for congruent tone compared to incongruent tone only when the robot action was homologous. Such a sensory attenuation can be considered as a marker of the processing of self-generated effects BIB001 .