Monday, October 01, 2007

Time Doc Byte # 1: Historical mental timing note

In preparation for my keynote presentation at this last weekends Interactive Metronome conference, I found myself rereading many of the key mental timing articles that I've recommended for reading (see "Key Research Articles" section of this blog for some of these articles). In the process, I realized a personal need to revisit some of the basic information, facts, concepts, etc. in these articles, some of which have been mentioned in posts at this humble blog. As I do this I plan to share some of these key bits of information and/or my musings in some brief posts. This is the first "Time Doc Byte" --- it is a brief historical note.

The recognition that temporal processing is an important dimension of behavior is not new. In his chapter “The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior,” Karl Lashley (1951) was among the first neurophysiologists to broach the issue of temporal processing. Lashley stated (emphasis added by the Time Doc blogmaster:
  • Temporal integration is not found exclusively in language; the coordination of leg movements in insects, the song of birds, the control of trotting and pacing in a gaited horse, the rat running the maze, the architect designing a house, and the carpenter sawing a board present a problem of sequences of action which cannot be explained in terms of succession of external stimuli.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Powered by ScribeFire.

No comments: