The feeling of doing across levels of analysis: The effects of perceived control on learning

Abstract

A person's sense of control was initially conceptualized in psychology as either a trait (Rotter, 1966), an attribution style (Weiner, 1979) or self-efficacy belief (Bandura, 1989a). More recent work in social cognition focuses on the process of inferring one's own causality and how the feeling of doing comes about. This investigation centers on a cue based process as leading to the experience of agency. These cues include vision, proprioception, social cues, and action relevant thought (Wegner & Sparrow, 2004). Since the advent of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), progress has been made in understanding the neural substrates implicated when one's infers own causality (for review see David, Newen, & Vogeley, 2008). An analysis of the different approaches to studying human agency, reveals their contributions with each level of analysis adding to and refining our understanding of perceived control and its effect on learning.

Keywords

• agency
• learning
• perceived control