The self in social interactions: sensory attenuation of auditory action effects is stronger in interactions with others

Abstract

The experience of oneself as an agent not only results from interactions with the inanimate environment, but often takes place in a social context. Interactions with other people have been suggested to play a key role in the construal of self-agency. Here, we investigated the influence of social interactions on sensory attenuation of action effects as a marker of pre-reflective self-agency. To this end, we compared the attenuation of the perceived loudness intensity of auditory action effects generated either by oneself or another person in either an individual, non-interactive or interactive action context. In line with previous research, the perceived loudness of self-generated sounds was attenuated compared to sounds generated by another person. Most importantly, this effect was strongly modulated by social interactions between self and other. Sensory attenuation of self- and other-generated sounds was increased in interactive as compared to the respective individual action contexts. This is the first experimental evidence suggesting that pre-reflective self-agency can extend to and is shaped by interactions between individuals.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1. Experimental setup.

Participants listened to tones that were either generated by their own button press (left column: Self) or another person's (i.e., experimenter) button press (right column: Other). One's own and the other's tone-eliciting button presses were either performed individually (upper row: Individual) or on request of the respective other person (lower row: Interactive).

Figure 2. Mean and standard error of the point of subjective equality (dB) in the four experimental conditions.