An Active Observer in a Dynamic Environment: The Influence of a Sense of Agency and Affordances on the Visual Anticipation

Soutenance de thèse en Psychologie cognitive, réalisée sous la direction d'Ouriel GRYNSZPAN, professeur, Université Paris-Saclay - LISN, et d'Elise PRIGENT, maîtresse de conférences, Université Paris-Saclay - LISN

Speaker : Pierre-Adams Ouattara Oulé

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Jury

Carole PEYRIN, Referee
Yann COELLO, Referee
Dorine VERGILINO-PEREZ, Examinor
Karolina MOUTSOPOULOU, Examinor
Patrice SENOT, Examinor

Abstract

Our brain has the ability to anticipate the future positions of objects and people around us. This ability enables us to navigate effectively through our dynamic environment. We also have the ability to act upon our surroundings, notably by setting objects in motion. These actions lead to the subjective experience of controlling our actions and their consequences, known as a sense of agency. While these two abilities coexist in our daily lives, few studies have examined the influence of the sense of agency and affordances (opportunities for action afforded by a situation) on visual anticipation.
For this reason, seven experiments divided into three studies explored this relationship using the representational moment paradigm. The first study shows that the sense of agency reduces visual anticipation, whereas affordances enhance it. The second study tests the theory of event coding as an explanatory framework for the relationship between the sense of agency and anticipation, without convincing success. The third study shows that a social context alters the influence of the sense of agency on visual anticipation.
These results suggest that visual anticipation is based on predictive mechanisms that are sensitive to both the physical context (affordances) and the social context (the presence of others and facial expressions). I propose that the amplitude of visual anticipation depends in part on phasic alertness, a state of readiness for perception and action induced by changes in the environment. This state of phasic alertness is induced with varying intensity depending on the sense of agency individuals feel toward the perceived movement and also on the level of perceived uncertainty in the situation.

Keywords

Anticipation, sense of agency, affordances, facial expressions, virtual reality, representational moment

Address

LISN, Campus universitaire Paris-Saclay, building 660 (Raimond Castaing Street, Gif-sur-Yvette), l’amphitéatre Shannon