Agency and Embodiment Provide Dissociable Benefits to Perception, Metacognition and Neural Processing During Active Sensing
Metacognition, judging how reliable our own perceptual decisions are, is central to adaptive behavior. Such judgments hinge on the reliability of the sensory evidence on which that decision is based, and active sensing through self-directed exploration is known to improve perception itself. Yet, how agency, the authorship over self-initiated actions, and the processing of the sensory…
Metacognition, the ability to gauge the reliability of our own perception, is vital for adaptive behavior. Active sensing, or self-directed exploration, can enhance perception, but how agency and embodiment influence metacognition during active sensing is still unclear. This study investigates the effects of agency and embodiment on metacognition and neural processing in a naturalistic auditory search task.
Participants performed a target-detection task in three conditions: active embodied exploration (using a virtual environment), active screen-based exploration (using a computer screen), and passive listening to replays of their own trials. Electroencephalography was used to measure neural responses.
The results showed that both agency conditions - active embodied exploration and active screen-based exploration - improved accuracy, metacognitive sensitivity, and overall neural response amplitude compared to passive listening. This suggests that agency, rather than physical movement, contributes to these enhancements. Importantly, embodiment alone specifically grounded both the neural response to the target and the participants' confidence in the immediate sensory evidence.
Therefore, while agency generally boosts perceptual and neural processing, embodiment specifically links confidence, both neurally and behaviorally, to the present moment.
Written by urgent.news from bioRxiv's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
