Originally posted by BMatthews
Hmmmm, I could have sworn I remembered the outer spoiler coming up in conjunction with the airleron for larger control inputs....
You're right about one thing though. The ailerons are the first thing to move followed by the spoiler to assist the roll. I was remembering it back**swards. But I'm still pretty sure it was the outer spoiler that is used for roll input assistance. The inner to outer progression was for speed brakes I believe. And then on touchdown they must have some sort of "Big Red Switch" that snaps the whole lot up on landing.... 
I'm flying again in March I'll have to watch more carefully.
Now, I can not speak for all aircraft, as I've only worked on about 10 different types of airliners, but in general, you use your innermost control surfaces first, especially at high speeds. You are correct, at the control input increases, you will see large deflections of the spoilers going outboard. Watch the wing between takeoff, cruise, and landing. You will see very little deflections until the landing phase where you will see decent amount of spoiler deflection.
As for the 'big red switch', every airliner type that I've worked on uses some sort of an auto ground spoiler system. This is usually tied to the main landing gear wheel speed transducers. The crew will arm the auto spoilers on approach and as the plane touches down and the wheels spin up, the spoilers will automatically deploy to full ground spoiler. This system is also interlocked to the throttles, so if the pilot must do a go around, pushing the throttles forward will automatically retract the spoilers again.