PuttingZone - Physical Science

PHYSICAL SCIENCE-- 4Ts -- Targeting

Separate Page for Green / Putt Reading

Spatial Perception	Action Perception	Body-Target Perception	Visuo-Spatial Perception	Dead-eyed Targeting	Sports Vision	Vestibular Balance
Head-Neck Signals	Targeting Timing	Movement Planning Timing	Working Memory	Multiple Perspectives	Sequencing Perceptions	Anchoring Perceptions

Spatial Perception

Action Perception

Alva Noë, Action in Perception (MIT Press 2005) "Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva No‘. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, No‘ argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought -- that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. ... "Noë provides a persuasive account of the "enactive" approach to perception, according to which perception is not simply based on the processing of sensory information, or on the construction of internal representations, but is fundamentally shaped by the motor possibilities of the perceiving body. ... Noë puts the brain back into the body, and the body back into the world. ... The action, for enactive theorists, is not in the brain; it is the organism as a whole acting in the environment that must be treated as the site of perception. ... After reading Noë, any account of perception purely in terms of brain representations seems rather washed out." (Shaun Gallagher, Times Literary Supplement).
Milner & Goodale, The Visual Brain in Action (Oxford UP 1995) (paperback 2006)
Goodale & Milner, Sight Unseen: An Exploration of Conscious and Unconscious Vision (Oxford UP 2004)

Body-Target Perception

Visuo-Spatial Perception

Necker Cube
Is the green DOT in front or in back? or both?

Dead-eyed Targeting

Sports Vision

Vestibular Balance

Head-Neck Signals

Targeting Timing

Movement Planning Timing

Working Memory

Multiple Perspectives

Sequencing Perceptions

Perceptions are used by the brain to design the movement. The movement comes only after the putter face is aimed and the setup posture adopted. Targeting perceptions that lead up to the aiming of the putter face (e.g., putt reading, target selection, line sighting) have to precede the aiming of the putter face. The perceptions generated during side-on targeting to check that the putter face is actually aimed where intended are performed only after the putter face is aimed and the body is squared up to the putter face as aimed. These side-on perception movements dovetail with the movements involved in generating perceptions (visual and kinesthetic) for touch or distance. The final set of perceptions have to do with locking down and killing visual attention so that movement processes have priority and proceed without interference. Hence, the stages of perception building must go forth in a temporally structured routine. In addition, perceptions last only a limited time, and so the process of building perceptions toward motion needs to stay "fluid" and without halting.

Anchoring Perceptions

Perceptions fade in time and also due to the brain's habit of devoting only a minimal effort to any given task and then clearing the decks for the next task. Perceptions also fade from attention shifts and intereference. In general, visual perceptions need to be anchored to the ground by locating features of stationary objects that represent the essential spatial relations perceived visually. This is especially the case when sighting the line from behind the ball and then walking in to set and aim the putter face.

Updated Monday, July 7, 2008 6:13 AM