We are currently studying people's metacognitions of the degree that they feel they are the cause of events around them. We are investigating this primarily using an arcade game-like paradigm in which participants move a cursor to try to "catch" stimuli that fall down the screen. The degree to which the cursor conforms to participants' mouse movements and the ease of the game are manipulated in a wide variety of ways, and we analyze how this influences the participants' feelings of agency.
While we began this line of research with normals, the data have been so interesting that it has expanded to more specialized populations. Grad student Matthew Kirkpatrick is currently gathering data with methamphetamine users, which so far is generating fascinating results. We also expect to begin testing on a schizophrenic population with colleague Peter Balsam. |