Choosing sides: making decisions in an escape response

Many of our movements are made without great deliberation. For instance, removing a hand from a hot stove is an easy decision to make. But what determines whether we choose to start walking with our right foot rather than our left? (Briggman et al. 2005). The decision‐making processes that underlie our movements, the why and how we move the way we do, are influenced by many factors such as what our senses tell us about our bodies and the external world, our motivations, and considerations of costs based upon energetics, time, distance, perceived success rates and outcomes. Our decisions are further shaped by uncertainty associated with our perception of sensory information and variability in how our bodies perform movements (Wolpert & Landy, 2012).