Neural markers of self-other integration in joint action – why attribution of intentionality matters

Joint sense of agency (JSoA) is the feeling of control experienced in joint action over one’s own and a partner’s actions and is proposed to arise from the sensorimotor predictive processes underlying action control and monitoring. In the current study, using interval estimates and neural responses measured by EEG, we aimed to evaluate whether JSoA is influenced by the perceived intentionality of a partner (a humanoid robot). Our behavioral results show that participants experienced JSoA with the partner when it was presented as seemingly intentional, but not when it was presented as a seemingly unintentional. Our EEG results support the idea that when a partner is introduced as intentional, self- and other-forward models are better integrated into a joint model, relative to when the partner is introduced as unintentional. Together, our results provide novel evidence that JSoA and joint sensorimotor processing are influenced by the perceived intentionality of the partner.