What principles and mechanisms allow humans to encode complex 3D information, and how can it be so fast, so accurately and so flexibly transformed into coordinated action? How do these processes work when developed to the limit of human physiological and cognitive capacity—as they are in high-speed sports, such as alpine skiing or motor racing? High-speed sports present not only physical challenges, but present some of the biggest perceptual-cognitive demands for the brain. The skill of these elite athletes is in (...) many ways an attractive model for studying human performance “in the wild”, and its neurocognitive basis. This article presents a framework theory for how these abilities may be realized in high-speed sports. It draws on a careful analysis of the case of the motorsport athlete, as well as theoretical concepts from: (1) cognitive neuroscience of wayfinding, steering, and driving; (2) cognitive psychology of expertise; (3) cognitive modeling and machine learning; (4) human-in-the loop modellling in vehicle system dynamics and human performance engineering; (5) experimental research (in the laboratory and in the field) on human visual guidance. The distinctive contribution is the way these are integrated, and the concept ofchunkingis used in a novel way to analyze a high-speed sport. The mechanisms invoked are domain-general, and not specific to motorsport or the use of a particular type of vehicle (or any vehicle for that matter); theegocentric chunking hypothesisshould therefore apply to any dynamic task that requires similar core skills. It offers a framework for neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers, and computer scientists working in the field of expert sports performance, and may be useful in translating fundamental research into theory-based insight and recommendations for improving real-world elite performance. Specific experimental predictions and applicability of the hypotheses to other sports are discussed. (shrink)

The world as we perceive it is structured into objects, actions and places that form parts of events. In this article, my aim is to explain why these categories are cognitively primary. From an empiricist and evolutionary standpoint, it is argued that the reduction of the complexity of sensory signals is based on the brain's capacity to identify various types of invariances that are evolutionarily relevant for the activities of the organism. The first aim of the article is to explain (...) why places, object and actions are primary cognitive categories in our constructions of the external world. It is shown that the invariances that determine these categories have their separate characteristics and that they are, by and large, independent of each other. This separation is supported by what is known about the neural mechanisms. The second aim is to show that the category of events can be analyzed as being constituted of the primary categories. The category of numbers is briefly discussed. Some implications for computational models of the categories are also presented. (shrink)