Basketball is definitely my favorite sport. I watch and play a lot of basketball. Now, what does this have to do with Psychology?
As I watched Dwayne Wade dribble down the court, I had a feeling what he was going to do with the ball. I saw Lebron James look at Wade and cut towards the basket as Wade instantaneously threw the ball. James caught it and scored two points for the Miami Heat. When I'm playing defense on someone, I sometimes give my opponent some space. There are many reasons for this. One reason is because I'm looking at the point guard, and I perceive from her face and body contact that she is desperately wanting to pass to my opponent. Therefore, I give my opponent some space to make the point guard think she is open. Once the point guard sees that I am no longer "on top of" my opponent, she instantly passes to her and I cut in to steal the pass. This all happens in about 5 seconds. This seems pretty simple, but it's not. How is our brain able to perceive these things so quickly?
Psychologist David Perret identified nerve cells that specialize in responding to a specific gaze, head angle, posture, or body movement. Other supercell clusters integrate this information and fire only when the cues collectively indicate the direction of someone's attention and approach. This instant analysis helps a soccer goalie to anticipate the direction of an impending kick. This also explains how I stole the ball in my earlier example!
Hello.
ReplyDeleteto be quite honest, i didnt really follow you in the beginning since i know almost nothing about basketball. However, your last paragraph was very interesting and i learned something new so thank you!
Anyway, i just wanted to share that as we were learning about how the eye turns the visual information from energy into neural impulses to travel to the brain i was awe struck. Can you believe that every time you look at ANYTHING your eye and brain goes through this whole complicated process to make you see what you see. It is incredible that this complex process that contains thousands of steps occurs in a matter of SECONDS!This process is also repeated millions of time throughout the day every time we look at something new. All i kept thinking was that our body is truly a miracle!
I agree with you Carmit on what you said about the eye, but when we learned about the process of hearing and how it's just energy waves in the beginning it really struck me how we take things for advantage and don't even realize the things that go into these complex things! Alexa your post was so interesting, and it is so interesting how when I play I sometimes do not even think about it anymore, but it comes automatically, like a reflex!
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