"When [electrical] impulses were injected in the range of one to eight per
second, an endless variety of repetitive movements of the extremities
occurred, beginning a few seconds after stimulation began and persisting
for a few seconds after the last electrical impulse. [...] the kind of
action depended on where the stimulation was injected; one signal generally
caused one kind of behavior."
Does this suggest that lag time for sequence control is "a few seconds"?
Is there a more accurate measure of the time delay observed in this or
similar experiments?
Would this kind of data -- the delay between electrical stimulation of the
brain and consequent behavioral output -- be useful for verifying the
perceptual control hierarchy? Are such data available for different kinds
of behavioral outputs, hence different levels of the hierarchy?
Does this suggest that lag time for sequence control is "a few seconds"?
Not necessarily. When very low impulse rates are employed, the
signal-to-noise ratio is necessarily low, and human systems (as well
properly designed engineered systems) slow down under those circumstances.
I would guess that the lag for sequence control would be somewhere between
half a second and one second, where I refer to the minimum time required
for recognizing that a wrong element had occurred and starting to do
something about it. It would probably be possible to do a differential
test, in which the reaction time for starting to oppose a disturbance of a
lower level variable would be measured, and then the _difference_ in
reaction time would be measured when the same variable had to be judged as
the correct or incorrect next element of a sequence.
Is there a more accurate measure of the time delay observed in this or
similar experiments?
Not yet.
Would this kind of data -- the delay between electrical stimulation of the
brain and consequent behavioral output -- be useful for verifying the
perceptual control hierarchy? Are such data available for different kinds
of behavioral outputs, hence different levels of the hierarchy?
There is probably a huge literature on reaction time, mostly pretty old.
And measures of reaction time usually are confounded by mechanical lags
(that's why I went to the electromyogram to find the true reaction time). I
think the experiments we need have probably not been done, particularly not
with modern equipment. Good project for a PhD.