Explicit and Implicit Sense of Agency in Depersonalization Experiences
Anna Ciaunica, Julia Ayache, Patrick Haggard, Estelle Nakul, Emanuelle Bonnet, Malika Auvray
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational study |
|---|---|
| Population | Non-clinical population, divided into groups with low and high occurrences of depersonalisation experiences |
| Key findings | No significant differences were found between individuals with low and high occurrences of depersonalisation experiences in implicit sense of agency. A trend suggested that participants with higher occurrences displayed a steeper slope, indicating a more time-sensitive explicit sense of agency. Temporal estimations differed significantly for short intervals in the Baseline condition between High and Low depersonalisation groups, but this difference was not significant in the Operant condition, which the authors suggest may indicate that action helps high-scoring participants experience the same temporality as lower scorers. |
Abstract
The sense of agency, i.e. the subjective feeling of voluntarily controlling one’s bodily actions is profoundly altered in Depersonalisation (DP henceforth), a condition that makes people feel detached from one’s self and body. The intentional binding (IB henceforth) effect has been proposed as an influential implicit measure of the sense of agency. IB refers to the phenomenon of perceived temporal compression between a voluntary action and its subsequent consequence. To examine the link between DP and the sense of agency in non-clinical population, an online study was conducted, combining the IB task as an implicit measure of the sense of agency with self-reports measuring the explicit sense of agency. Our study found no significant differences between individuals with low and high occurrences of DP experiences with regards to implicit sense of agency. However, a trend for participants with higher occurences of DP experiences to display a steeper slope, i.e. a more time-sensitive explicit sense of agency was observed. Specifically, whilst temporal estimations were significantly different for short intervals in the Baseline condition for the High and Low DP groups, this difference was not significant in the Operant condition, suggesting that action might “help” DP participants with high scores to experience the same temporality with participants scoring lower on the depersonalization scale.