Sensorimotor conflicts alter perceptual and action monitoring

Abstract

Bodily self-consciousness is defined as a set of prereflective representations of integrated bodily signals giving rise to self-identification, self-location and first-person perspective. While bodily self-consciousness is known to modulate perception, little is known about its influence on higher-level cognitive processes. Here, we manipulated bodily self-consciousness by applying sensorimotor conflicts while participants performed a perceptual task followed by confidence judgments. Results showed that sensorimotor conflicts altered perceptual monitoring by decreasing metacognitive performance. In a second experiment, we replicated this finding and extended our results by showing that sensorimotor conflicts also altered action monitoring, as measured implicitly through intentional binding. In a third experiment, we showed that effects on perceptual monitoring were induced specifically by sensorimotor conflicts related to the trunk and not to the hand. Taken together, our results suggest that bodily self-consciousness may serve as a scaffold for perceptual and action monitoring.