Cues to Agency

This chapter outlines the most prominent accounts addressing the sense of agency, that is, the subjective experience of control over our actions. We discuss these accounts and especially the role played by different cues for establishing a sense of agency over our actions. These cues concern perceptual and sensorimotor information that becomes available when we act. We discuss the extent to which people are sensitive to each of these cues, and how these cues could give rise to a veridical sense of agency. We then provide a way of integrating the different accounts on the sense of agency and the use of different cues, and add an additional focus on the usefulness of timing mechanisms for establishing a more veridical sense of agency than some previous accounts on agency have suggested.