ABSTRACT
There are three general approaches to a scientific study of mind. The earliest psychological theories started from the point of view of systematic introspection. A se co nd source of scientific data involves the detailed analysis of task performance. Finally, mi nd may be inferred from the measurements of brain activity. One common aspect to these three views of mi nd is their relianee upon time as a dimension in which to embed their disparate observations. As William James (1890) has pointed out, consciousness f10ws like a stream. Brain aetivity may be viewed as a stream of neural spikes separated in time (Thompson, 1967). Performance is also often measured in terms of the time required for the mental operations that produce it (Chase, 1973). In this chapter, we try to deseribe a unified approach to aspects of mi nd based upon the techniques of mental ehronometry.
