The Two-Axis Model of Self-Awareness: Sense of Agency and Metacognitive Presence Diverge in Antiphase Under Prediction Error

The sense of agency (SoA) and the sense of metacognitive presence (SoP) are typically considered to be aligned: both high in normal experience and both low in dissociation. This paper proposes that they actually diverge in opposite directions depending on prediction error (PE). When PE is high, SoA decreases (the action feels involuntary) while SoP increases (the person feels alert and present). When PE is low, as in automaticity or flow, SoA remains high but unreflected, while SoP drops toward zero. This model reframes self-awareness as an artifact of error monitoring rather than of attention, explaining why self-consciousness vanishes during flow despite high attention. The hypothesis is novel and falsifiable, and a minimal experimental protocol is proposed.

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Abstract

The sense of agency (SoA) and the sense of metacognitive presence (SoP) — the felt engagement of the self-monitoring system — are typically treated as convergent markers of intact conscious experience: both high in normal function, both degraded in dissociative states. Here I propose that they are, in fact, two dissociable axes of a single predictive mechanism that diverge in antiphase under acute prediction error (PE). Specifically: as PE rises, SoA falls ("it wasn't me, it happened by itself") while SoP rises ("I snapped into the moment"). Under low PE — that is, in automaticity and flow — the pattern reverses: SoA remains high and unreflected, while SoP collapses toward zero. This model reframes the folk concept of "self" as an artifact of the presence axis (the error-monitoring loop) rather than the authorship axis (the motor comparator). It further predicts that self-awareness is triggered not by attentional load, as the Attention Schema Theory (Graziano, 2013) implies, but by prediction error — a claim that directly explains the flow-state anomaly, in which attention is maximal and self-consciousness vanishes. Existing literatures on agency (comparator model) and on error monitoring (ERN/Pe) independently support each half of this claim. However, they have not been unified, and current predictive-processing accounts treat SoA and SoP as co-directional. The antiphase hypothesis is therefore both novel and falsifiable. A minimal experimental protocol is proposed.