Attentional selection is biased towards controllable stimuli

Abstract

While the factors that contribute to individuals feeling a sense agency over a stimulus have been extensively studied, the cognitive effects of a sense of agency over a stimulus are little known. Here, we conducted three experiments examining whether attentional selection is biased towards controllable stimuli. In all three experiments, participants moved four circle stimuli, one of which was under their control. A search target then appeared on one of the stimuli. In Experiment 1, the target was always on the controlled stimulus, but we manipulated the degree of control the participant had. In Experiment 2, the controlled stimulus was the target on 50% of the trials. In Experiment 3, we used a central arrow cue to tell participants which arrow key to press (rather than using a free choice task) and made the controlled stimulus the target on 25% of the trials, making it nonpredictive of the target’s location. Across the three experiments we found that visual selection was biased towards controllable stimuli. This attentional bias was larger when participants had full, rather than partial, control over the stimulus, indicating that sense of agency leads one to prioritize objects under their control. The fact that agency influenced attention when the controlled object contained the target in 100%, 50%, and 25% of trials, and occurred even when participants needed to monitor the center of the display in order to know which arrow key to press, suggests that its influence does not depend on task relevance or volitional decision-making.