Selection and Control of Action¶

Status: emerging
Last updated: 2026-05-31
Sources: 9781119636113.Ch4.Pdf
Tags: [action-selection, motor-control, fitts-law, hicks-law, stimulus-response-compatibility, motor-learning, cognitive-foundations]

Summary¶

Selection and control of action concerns how people choose among alternative responses and execute movements when interacting with machines and systems (Proctor & Vu, 2021). The chapter organises this around two well-established quantitative laws of human behaviour: Hick's law, which relates choice reaction time to the number of stimulus-response alternatives, and Fitts's law, which models aimed movement time. It also covers stimulus-response compatibility, multitasking costs, and motor learning, all of which bear directly on interface and control design.

Body¶

Context¶

Proctor and Vu (2021), in their handbook chapter on selection and control of action, examine how people choose among alternative responses and execute movements when interacting with machines and systems. They organise the field around two well-established quantitative laws — Hick's law and Fitts's law — and extend it to stimulus-response compatibility, multitasking costs, and motor learning, all of which bear on interface and control design. Within this knowledge base the article is the output side of the cognitive-foundations cluster: it follows on from the perceptual input treated in Sensation And Perception and the central stages in Information Processing, supplies the response-time and movement-time laws that quantify the workload concerns in Mental Workload, and grounds the control-mapping principles that the display-oriented work in Representation Design depends on.

Key Points¶

Action selection is fundamental to interaction with systems of all kinds, including smart devices incorporating machine learning. Response selection is the process of choosing among alternative actions to execute, such as launching apps on a smartphone or initiating and monitoring automation in an autonomous vehicle. Modern basic research dates from around 1950 and developed alongside applied human factors work. Paul M. Fitts, who headed the Psychology Branch of the U.S. Army Air Force Aeromedical Laboratory from its founding in 1945, made lasting contributions including Fitts's law and work on stimulus-response compatibility (PDF p. 1, orig. p. 91).

Selection of action is studied primarily through choice-reaction tasks, which map a set of stimulus alternatives to a set of responses, with reaction time as the primary measure and error rate as secondary. Simple responses such as keypresses are used to isolate the central decisions in selecting actions from the motoric processes of executing them. Methods such as Sternberg's additive factors method let researchers examine the selective influence of variables on different processing stages (PDF p. 2, orig. p. 92).

Two quantitative laws anchor the chapter. The Hick-Hyman law (Hick, 1952; Hyman, 1953) holds that reaction time increases with the amount of information transmitted, that is, with the number of stimulus-response alternatives (PDF p. 2, orig. p. 92). Fitts's law is the preeminent model for aimed movements, relating movement time to target distance and width through an index of difficulty (PDF p. 11, orig. p. 101). Alongside these, stimulus-response compatibility, response-effect compatibility, and population stereotypes determine how naturally a control maps to its effect, which is central to control-layout design (PDF pp. 4–6, orig. pp. 94–96).

The chapter extends to multiple-task performance and learning, covering task switching and mixing costs, the psychological refractory period effect, and driving as an applied multitasking case (PDF pp. 8–10, orig. pp. 98–100). Motor learning is addressed through practice schedules, feedback, intrinsic motivation and attention, and the role of videogames (PDF pp. 14–16, orig. pp. 104–106).

Conclusion¶

Proctor and Vu (2021) conclude that action selection rests on lawful, quantifiable relationships — Hick's and Fitts's laws, compatibility effects, and population stereotypes — that translate directly into interface and control design and into predictions about how skill transfers across tasks.

References¶

Hick, W.E. (1952) 'On the rate of gain of information', Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4(1), pp. 11–26. doi: 10.1080/17470215208416600. hick1952rate

Hyman, R. (1953) 'Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time', Journal of Experimental Psychology, 45, pp. 188–196. To be validated.

Proctor, R.W. & Vu, K.-P.L. (2021) 'Selection and Control of Action', in Salvendy, G. & Karwowski, W. (eds.) Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics. 5th edn. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. proctor2021actionselection

Open Questions¶

How do Hick's law and Fitts's law generalise to gestural, voice, and gaze-based interfaces beyond traditional keypress and pointing tasks?
What practice and feedback schedules best support transfer of action-selection skill to automated-system supervision?