Affective Grounding of Sense of Agency and Action Regulation (AffAct)

为了达到我们的目标，我们需要能够判断我们的行为是否能够成功地影响我们的环境。能动性是指能够控制自己的行为及其影响的感觉。代理的经验对于自我决定的行为是至关重要的。这是人类最小自我表征的一个关键方面，人类自我，DFG优先计划“主动自我”寻求调查。当我们试图达到理想状态或避免消极后果时，能动性是最重要的。例如，我们经常依靠积极和消极的反馈来推断我们是否能成功地控制我们的环境。因此，代理感被认为与行为结果的情感加工有关。然而，大多数先前的研究项目调查了代理经验的感官或认知决定因素，而没有任何情感价值。因此，行动的情感效价效应在多大程度上对代理感起作用仍不清楚。该项目的目标是为科学模型奠定基础，该模型可以预测代理经验和情感处理如何相互影响，以及这在多大程度上影响自我决定的行为。基于我们之前对代理感、情感加工和行为调节的研究，我们将探讨a)代理感如何调节情感反馈的加工，b)情感加工中与代理相关的变化如何影响我们自我调节行为的能力，以及c)在何种情况下情感信息决定代理经验的出现。我们的项目将结合脑电图测量与情感和感觉处理相关的神经过程与代理经验和行动调节的实验操作。通过这种方式，我们旨在通过阐明情感处理作为目标导向行为中自我意识的潜在核心机制，为DFG优先项目“主动自我”做出贡献。

To reach our goals we need to be able to tell whether our actions can successfully influence our environment. Sense of agency is the feeling of being in control of one’s actions and their effects. The experience of agency is vital for self-determined behavior. It is a key aspect of the minimal self-representation in humans, of the human self, which the DFG Priority Program „Active Self” seeks to investigate. Agency is most important when we try to reach desirable states or avoid negative consequences. For example, we often rely on positive and negative feedback to infer if we can successfully control our environment. Therefore, sense of agency is assumed to be bound to the affective processing of action outcomes. However, most previous research projects investigated sensory or cognitive determinants of agency experience without any affective value. As a result, it is still not clear in how far the affective valence of action effects plays a functional role for sense of agency. The goal of this project is to lay the groundwork for a scientific model which can predict how agency experience and affective processing influence each other, and in how far this impacts self-determined behavior. Based on our previous work on sense of agency, affective processing, and action regulation we will investigate a) how the sense of agency modulates the processing of affective feedback, b) how agency-related changes in affective processing influence our ability to self-regulate behavior, and c) under which circumstances affective information determines the emergence of agency experience. Our project will combine EEG measurements of neural processes related to affective and sensory processing with experimental manipulations of agency experience and action regulation. In this way we aim to contribute to the DFG Priority Program “The Active Self”, by elucidating affective processing as one potential core mechanism underlying the sense of self during goal-directed actions.