The Sequencing of Action

Abstract

Any theory of action must deal with three basic questions: What is the structure of the components representing skilled behavior? How are these components activated in proper sequence? And how are these components timed or produced at the appropriate rate? The previous chapter examined the first of these problems, the structure of the components for organizing everyday actions, and the present chapter examines the second, how these components become activated in proper sequence.

Not only speech, but all skilled acts seem to involve the same problems of serial ordering, even down to the temporal coordination of muscular movements in such a movement as reaching and grasping. Analysis of the nervous mechanisms underlying order in the more primitive acts may contribute ultimately to the solution of even the physiology of logic…. Serial order is typical of the problems raised by cerebral activity; few, if any, of the problems are simpler or promise easier solution. We can, perhaps, postpone the fatal day when we must face them, by saying that they are too complex for present analysis, but there is a danger here of constructing a false picture of those processes we believe to be simpler.

(Lashley, 1951, pp. 122, 197)