People who play football/soccer tend to use straight line pattern matching. Those who play american baseball use parabolic pattern matching to catch the baseball. But at the plate, they go back to straight line patterns, which is why so many strike out.

In the brain of any conscious animal, there is a model of the surrounding space. When the animal sees a ball, or whatever coming, it tracks the object in this space. As it tracks the object, it unconsciously projects the path of the object ahead in time. As tracking continues and the animal and object approach each other, the projected path is continually updatted. However, complete closure only occurs and the ball caught or hit if the animal "keeps its eyes on the ball".
Otherwise, the ball is dropped. Rattlesnakes tend to take theirs eyes off the ball and therefore lose games to the Yanks who keep their eyes on the ball.

• I asked not WHAT but HOW animals (including humans) do that? - alexander - November 2, 2001 - 16:18 UTC
  • May be, brain memorizes experience? - alexander - November 5, 2001 - 20:23 UTC