Launch! Self-Agency as a Discriminative Cue for Humans (Homo Sapiens) and Monkeys (Macaca Mulatta)

• Authors: David J Smith, Georgia State University; Barbara A Church, Georgia State University; Brooke N Jackson, Georgia State University; Markie N Adamczyk, Georgia State University; Carmen N Shaw, Emory University; Michael J Beran, Georgia State University
• Journal Title: JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-GENERAL
• Volume: Volume 150, Number 9
• Publisher: AMER PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOC | 2021-09-01, Pages 1901-1917
• Type of Work: Article | Post-print: After Peer Review
• Publisher DOI: http://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001026
• Subjects: Psychology, General; Biology, Ecology
• Keywords: Social Sciences; Psychology, Experimental; Psychology; self-awareness; agency; comparative cognition; categorization; discrimination learning; RHESUS-MONKEYS; UNCERTAINTY RESPONSES; AWARENESS; METACOGNITION; ABNORMALITIES; INFORMATION; MOVEMENTS; IMPLICIT; MEMORY; ALIEN

Abstract

Self-agency is a crucial aspect of self-awareness. It is underresearched given the phenomenon’s subjectivity and difficulty of study. It is particularly underresearched comparatively, given that animals cannot receive agency instructions or make agency declarations. Accordingly, we developed a distinctively new self-agency paradigm. Humans and rhesus macaques learned event categories differentiated by whether the participant’s volitional response controlled a screen launch. They learned by trial and error after minimal instructions with no agency orientation (humans) or no instructions (monkeys). After learning, humans’ verbalized category descriptions were coded for self-agency attributions. Across three experiments, humans’ agency attributions qualitatively improved discrimination performance—participants not invoking self-agency rarely exceeded chance performance. It also produced a diagnostic latency profile: classification accuracy depended heavily on the temporal relationship between the button-press and the launch, but only for those invoking agency. In our last experiment, monkeys performed the launch task. Their performance and latency profiles mirrored that of humans. Thus, self-agency can be self-discovered as a frame organizing discrimination. And it may be used as a discrimination cue by some nonhuman animals as well.