Baldwin, J. M. (1903). New questions in mental chronometry. In J. M. Baldwin, Fragments in philosophy and science (pp. 283-286). London, Great Britain: John C. Nimmo.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/13706-016
In view of an article in the Medical Record for March 4, 1893, it may be of interest to its readers to have a further note on the subject of the "Psychology of Reaction-time." The distinction between "sensory" and "muscular" reaction was first made public by Lange, working under Wundt; and it seemed from his results, and others immediately following him, that the distinction was sound. Indeed it appears reasonable from the point of view of general psychological theory. All we know of the attention, as well as what we know of the relation of attention to voluntary movement, makes it seem likely that a reaction would be shorter if the attention be concentrated beforehand on the proposed movement (muscular or motor reaction), than if it be concentrated on the signal to which the subject is instructed to react (sensory reaction). Recent researches, however, have given results which have tended to make a reconsideration of the question necessary; indeed some experiments have been so negative that certain investigators are disposed to throw over the distinction altogether. I am sure that this would be to go too far. I have endeavored incidentally to account for the conflicting results of experiment in this field by borrowing from the medical psychologists the results of their analysis of the speech function, on the basis of its pathology. The recognition of the great forms of aphasia--i.e., sensory and motor--and the corresponding recognition of the existence of visual, auditory, and motor speech types, gives a strong presumption that the distinction between sensory and motor in the voluntary movements of speech and writing applies as well to voluntary movements of all kinds; that is, to all movements which have been learned by attention and effort. This means that a man is an "auditive," or a "visual," or a "motor" in his voluntary movements generally. His attention is trained by habit, education, etc., more upon one class of images than upon others, his mind fills up more easily with images of this class, and his mental processes and voluntary reactions proceed by preference along these channels of easiest function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)