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Sense of Agency as a Gate for Cognitive Control: Insights from EEG and Behaviour

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 2026, 3:00 – 5:00 pm PST, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Luisa Alessia Grote¹ (grote@ifado.de), Daniel Schneider¹, Edmund Wascher¹, Stefan Arnau¹; ¹Leibniz-Research Center for Working Environment and Human Factors

Sense of agency (SoA), the experience of controlling one’s actions and their consequences, is crucial for self-representation and adaptive goal-directed behaviour, yet the mechanisms by which it shapes cognitive processing remain debated. While comparator models emphasize the role of prediction-outcome matching, Bayesian accounts propose that SoA arises from probabilistic cue integration weighted by reliability. We investigated how feedback-based manipulations of agency reliability affect preparatory investment, decision dynamics, and outcome monitoring using EEG time-frequency analysis, EZ-diffusion modelling, and thought probes. Thirty-five participants performed a calibrated colour-discrimination task under three within-subject feedback conditions varying the perceived outcome controllability: veridical feedback, self-attributed errors, and system-attributed errors. Results showed that compromised SoA impaired task performance: compared to veridical feedback, system-attributed errors elicited slower responses, lower accuracy, reduced drift rate, and longer non-decision times, while boundary separation was unchanged, ruling out a speed–accuracy trade-off. EEG revealed parallel effects: both alpha- and beta-ERD during task preparation were attenuated under reduced agency, indicating diminished attentional engagement and motor readiness. Monitoring dissociations emerged in theta: intact SoA amplified theta power for self-generated errors, whereas corrupted feedback increased theta power for action-feedback conflicts. Reward effects were minimal. Thought probes mirrored these neural and behavioural costs. These findings demonstrate that perceived SoA dynamically modulates preparatory oscillations, decision evidence quality, and outcome monitoring. SoA thereby functions as a reliability prior guiding control allocation: reliable feedback strengthens preparatory engagement, while compromised agency triggers disengagement and adaptive monitoring, embedding comparator mechanisms within a broader Bayesian control-allocation framework.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Monitoring & inhibitory control