Waving goodbye to contrast: self-generated hand movements attenuate visual sensitivity

It is well known that the human brain continuously predicts the sensory consequences of its own body movements, which typically results in sensory attenuation. Yet, the extent and exact mechanisms underlying sensory attenuation are still debated. To explore this issue, we asked participants to decide which of two visual stimuli was of higher contrast in a virtual reality situation where one of the stimuli could appear behind the participants’ invisible moving hand or not. Over two experiments, we measured the effects of such “virtual occlusion” on first-order sensitivity and on metacognitive monitoring. Our findings show that self-generated hand movements reduced the apparent contrast of the stimulus. This result can be explained by the active inference theory. Moreover, sensory attenuation seemed to affect only first-order sensitivity and not (second-order) metacognitive judgments of confidence.