Editing Perception (section)

==== Agency ====
{{main|Sense of agency}}

''Sense of agency'' refers to the subjective feeling of having chosen a particular action. Some conditions, such as [[schizophrenia]], can cause a loss of this sense, which may lead a person into delusions, such as feeling like a machine or like an outside source is controlling them. An opposite extreme can also occur, where people experience everything in their environment as though they had decided that it would happen.<ref>{{cite book|last=Metzinger|first=Thomas|title=The Ego Tunnel|publisher=Basic Books|year=2009|isbn=978-0-465-04567-9|pages=117–118}}</ref>

Even in non-[[Pathology|pathological]] cases, there is a measurable difference between the making of a decision and the feeling of agency. Through methods such as [[Neuroscience of free will#Libet experiment|the Libet experiment]], a gap of half a second or more can be detected from the time when there are detectable neurological signs of a decision having been made to the time when the subject actually becomes conscious of the decision.

There are also experiments in which an illusion of agency is induced in psychologically normal subjects. In 1999, psychologists [[Daniel Wegner|Wegner]] and Wheatley gave subjects instructions to move a mouse around a scene and point to an image about once every thirty seconds. However, a second person—acting as a test subject but actually a confederate—had their hand on the mouse at the same time, and controlled some of the movement. Experimenters were able to arrange for subjects to perceive certain "forced stops" as if they were their own choice.<ref>{{cite journal|vauthors=Wegner DM, Wheatley T|date=July 1999|title=Apparent mental causation. Sources of the experience of will|journal=The American Psychologist|volume=54|issue=7|pages=480–92|citeseerx=10.1.1.188.8271|doi=10.1037/0003-066x.54.7.480|pmid=10424155}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Metzinger|first=Thomas|title=Being No One|date=2003|page=508}}</ref>