Abstract
Different planes of disruption may result in a loss or breakdown of the sense of agency. They may pertain to the different levels of perceptual, attentional, and psychiatric disorders, and generally they have in common a loss of the sense of control and a disruption of binding between intentions and actions. In some cases, they imply a deficit in the sense of ownership, which may be subdivided into ownership for body-actions and for thought-action. In other cases, what is lost is the sense of agency itself, similarly divided into agency for action and agency for thoughts. This chapter discusses disruption of the sense of agency, taking into account these different levels of analysis. Specifically, we consider perceptual deficits, such as blindsight and arm illusions, which are related to agency misidentification, as well as attentive deficits, which are related, by contrast, to disruption in attention allocation; for example, as in neglect syndrome. Finally, the psychiatric disturbances schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disturbs are considered as examples of psychological impairments in the perception of agency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
