Constraining the Sense of Agency in Human-Machine Interaction

One of the most significant issues in Human-Machine Interaction relates to how much autonomy delegates to automation and whether this could degrade the human perception of control, referred to as Sense of Agency. In this study, the What-Whether-When model of intentional action was used to look for variations in the Sense of Agency by measuring the Intentional Binding effect when the human is told either what action to perform or whether to act or when to act. Participants were asked to reproduce the time interval between a keypress and an acoustic tone (delivered at different time intervals). In Experiment 1, this action could be entirely voluntary or fully constrained by the computer. In Experiment 2, the computer constrained only one decision component at a time (either what, whether, or when). Experiment 1 indicates that Intentional Binding is increased for voluntary actions. Results from Experiment 2 suggest that selecting what to do, whether, and when to act have different effects, with the Sense of Agency being degraded when participants were told what action to perform and whether to act. Further, results show the presence of a specific window of opportunity needed for the Sense of Agency to develop for each constraint.