The Interplay Between Affective Processing and Sense of Agency During Action Regulation: A Review.

Sense of agency is the feeling of being in control of one's actions and their perceivable effects. Most previous research identified cognitive or sensory determinants of agency experience. However, it has been proposed that sense of agency is also bound to the processing of affective information. For example, during goal-directed actions or instrumental learning we often rely on positive feedback (e.g., rewards) or negative feedback (e.g., error messages) to determine our level of control over the current task. Nevertheless, we still lack a scientific model which adequately explains the relation between affective processing and sense of agency. In this article, we review current empirical findings on how affective information modulates agency experience, and, conversely, how sense of agency changes the processing of affective action outcomes. Furthermore, we discuss in how far agency-related changes in affective processing might influence the ability to enact cognitive control and action regulation during goal-directed behavior. A preliminary model is presented for describing the interplay between sense of agency, affective processing, and action regulation. We propose that affective processing could play a role in mediating the influence between subjective sense of agency and the objective ability to regulate one's behavior. Thus, determining the interrelation between affective processing and sense of agency will help us to understand the potential mechanistic basis of agency experience, as well as its functional significance for goal-directed behavior.

Distraction from pain: The role of selective attention and pain catastrophizing.

BACKGROUND: Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of cognitive engagement in reducing concurrent pain. However, little is known about the role of individual differences in inhibitory control abilities and negative pain-related cognitions in modulating the magnitude of this type of distraction from pain. METHODS: In a pain distraction paradigm, 41 participants completed a working memory task with both a demanding high load condition (2-back) and an easy low load condition (0-back), while receiving warm or painful thermal stimuli to their left forearm. To control for individual differences in sensitivity to pain and perceived task difficulty, nociceptive stimulus intensity and task speed were individually calibrated. Additionally, participants completed a set of cognitive inhibition tasks (flanker, go/nogo, Stroop) and questionnaires about negative pain-related cognitions (fear of pain, pain catastrophizing) prior to the distraction paradigm. RESULTS: As expected, engaging in the high load condition significantly reduced perceived intensity and unpleasantness of nociceptive stimuli, compared to the low load condition. The size of the distraction effect correlated significantly with better cognitive inhibition and selective attention abilities, as measured by the flanker task. A moderation analysis revealed a significant interaction between pain catastrophizing and performance in the flanker task in predicting the distraction effect size: Participants who performed well on the flanker task showed more pain reduction, but only when they were average to high pain catastrophizers. CONCLUSIONS: Selective attention abilities and pain catastrophizing seem to be important factors in explaining individual differences in the size of the analgesic response to a distractive task. SIGNIFICANCE: Understanding which factors influence the effectiveness of cognitive engagement in distracting from pain could help to optimize its therapeutic application in patient care. This study shows that a complex interplay of cognitive inhibition abilities, specifically selective attention, and negative pain-related cognitions, such as pain catastrophizing, modulate the magnitude of the distraction effect.