How timely! I recently attended a nephew's soccer game. Having never played, I didn't really know what was going on. It seemed to me that I had a much harder time perceiving what happened; I was forever asking someone to tell me what they saw, even though I was looking at the same thing. If a lot of perception is predictive based on previous experience, it makes sense that I felt like I was half blind.
Your perception system doesn't report some sort of fixed reality. It surfaces the information that is most relevant to you and what you want to do. For example, better batters playing baseball will literally perceive the ball as larger.
A really interesting example of this in my life is racquetball. When you first start playing it can be difficult to know if the ball hit the wall or the ground first. With experience it’s pretty easy to tell. You are still looking at the same thing. But some inexperienced players I play with ask wether it hit the ground or not. Interestingly for me at least I couldn’t tell you exactly where it hit or even how it bounced getting there I just know wether it hit the ground or not.
