Action Selection

Action selection, also known as response selection, refers to how people determine specific actions to perform and, as studied in choice-reaction tasks, to processes involved in deciding which response to make to a presented stimulus. Action selection is considered to be distinct from perception and from the processes involved in the execution of movements to carry out the actions. F. C. Donders (1868/1969) was among the earliest researchers to study action selection in his investigations of the temporal properties of information processing. Recent years have witnessed an expansion of interest in action-selection phenomena, since the linking of perception and cognition to action is fundamental to all behavior.