Comparing metacognitive representations of bodily and external agency

We studied the role of movement and outcome information in forming metacognitive representations of agency. Human participants (N = 40; 25 female, 15 male, 0 diverse) completed a goal-oriented task: a semi-virtual version of a ball-throwing game. In two conditions, we manipulated either the visual representation of the throwing movement or its proximal outcome (the resulting ball trajectory). We measured participants' accuracy in a discrimination agency task, as well as confidence in their responses and tested for differences in the electrophysiological (EEG) signal using mass linear mixed effect modeling. We found no mean differences between participants' metacognitive efficiency between conditions. However, through exploratory analyses, we found that metacognitive sensitivity did not correlate between the two conditions, and that the EEG signal differed between the two conditions during the agency discrimination task. We cautiously interpret these results as suggesting that although both movement and outcome information contribute to participants' sense of agency, they may do so through distinct processes. These findings highlight the need for further research examining the potential neurophysiological differences corresponding to the conceptual distinction between bodily and external agency. Significance Statement The sense of agency refers to the feeling of intentionally moving our body and, through that movement, affecting our surroundings. Empirical studies often explore this concept by focusing on either the bodily representations (how participants move their bodies) or the external representations (how this movement affects the environment) of voluntarily performed actions. In other words, these two types of representations are often assumed to be equivalent. This work challenges that assumption using a goal-oriented motor task, electroencephalographic data, and bias-free methods from metacognitive literature.