Motor Agency: A New and Highly Sensitive Measure to Reveal Agency Disturbances in Early Psychosis

Hélène Wilquin (1) , Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell (1)

1 URECA - Unité de Recherche en Sciences Cognitives et Affectives

Background: Early diagnosis of young adults at risk of schizophrenia is essential for preventive approaches of the illness. Nevertheless, classic screening instruments are difficult to use because of the non-specific nature of the signs at this pre-onset phase of illness. The objective of the present contribution was to propose an innovating test that can probe the more specific symptom of psychosis, i.e., the sense of agency, which is defined as being the immediate experience of oneself as the cause of an action. More specifically, we tested whether motor agency is abnormal in early psychosis.

Keywords: Patients; Young adults; Sense of agency; Psychoses; Pendulums; Neuropsychological testing; Schizophrenia; Short-term memory

Domains: Cognitive science; Psychology; Humanities and Social Sciences; Psychology; Cognitive science; Life Sciences [q-bio]; Human health and pathology; Psychiatrics and mental health

Hélène Wilquin, Yvonne Delevoye-Turrell. Motor Agency: A New and Highly Sensitive Measure to Reveal Agency Disturbances in Early Psychosis. PLoS ONE, 2012, 7 (2), pp.e30449. ⟨10.1371/journal.pone.0030449⟩. ⟨hal-02275309⟩