h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It is very interesting how perception differs between people even though at a rough level brains seem the same.

A while ago I did The Perception Census, which was a range of different tasks designed to test different aspects of perception - things like being able to detect if something is a circle, or to predict the path of a moving object. It would also sometimes say how similar my results were to the other census respondents. Educational to learn about the other kinds of senses beyond the classic 5.

Now, that's interesting! I couldn't tell you whether a roughly circular figure was absolutely round or not. Or, probably, predict the path of a moving object - which is why I can't catch balls.

Yes, the circle one was like an eye test, flashing up a circle and a not-circle and asking you to say which one was the not-circle, but the path prediction one was intriguing. There was a ball moving along a line, and you had to click on where the ball was when it disappeared - most people think it had moved further than it had, because they predict where it should be at the time when they realise it had disappeared (but the realisation is slightly later than the actual disappearance). Sometimes, but not always, useful for catching balls indeed!

Aha!