Skiing pushes the human visual system to its absolute computational limits. Moving down a mountain requires the brain to process massive amounts of sensory data in milliseconds. The visual cortex does not just see the snow; it maps a dynamic, high-speed environment to ensure survival. This process relies on a complex network of pathways that turn light into precise muscle movements.
Skiing Vision-related Aspects
Visual Search
It’s our ability to organize details of the visual scene by visual tracking or scanning. This is done by executing eye movements revisiting the environment to ensure the identification of what surrounds us.The beginner, due to the novelty of a complex environment, as the expert in new situations, has a limited capacity of visual information processing and must restrict it using an oriented visual search strategy for relevant information.
Visual Discrimination
It’s our skill to interpret the surrounding environment through visual discrimination of differences in shape, dimension, orientation, and object location as well as skiing situations. We use it to identify, organize, store and recall visual information that we subsequently apply to future actions. The deficit of this capacity implies, for example, misjudging different snow types appearing repeatedly in terms of confusing aspects like shades and textures. It is also used to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. Poor visual discrimination tends to generalize visual information.
Visual Discrimination by Preference
It’s our searching capacity to concentrate on specific slope shapes or terrain elements ignoring others. For example, observing the best line down in a mogul field leaving aside slope tilt.
Advance Global Visual Interpretation
It allows interpreting an image without discriminating details. Taking the previous example of a mogul field where we interpret beforehand its size but not snow conditions.
Visual Memory
It refers to the kind of memory where the information stored in our brain is initially acquired by our visual system. It is our ability to quickly evoke certain object characteristics associated with past experiences with that object by visually recalling it. We verify in our motion images of different snow types in terms of textures, relating it to distinct friction properties. The effective use of snow properties’ visual memory substantially influences our visual anticipation. Most skiing information is obtained by our vision, so processing this type of memory is essential for learning. It is composed of visual sequential memoryand visuospatial memory.
Visual Sequential Memory
It’s our capacity to remember visual information in a certain order applied when this information is present in an individual form and a certain time lapse between each one of the images.
Visuospatial Memory
It’s used, for example, by the racer during his training in which performs several runs in the same slalom course, developing a visual registration of the gates’ location.
Visual Short-term Memory
It’s a type of memory that stores visual information for a short period of time to be used during a current cognitive task, like memorizing the slalom course layout before the competition. As the visual system needs to detect and compare information to guide our motion, this information is stored momentarily and limitedly in our brain with this type of visual memory.
Figure-ground Contrast
It occurs during visual perception, we detect spatially arranged objects in the environment. A fundamental aspect of this process is our ability to identify visual scene perspectives in which the object sticks out and it is clearly perceived, but the background is perceived blurry.
Figure-ground Visual Organization
It forms part of objects’ visual recognition in the visual scene and it refers to the identification of the figure (an object or person) from the background (the environment). This contrast allows us to detect details of the figure without confusing it with the background of the image.
The figure is what stands out in a visual scene, it is the center of attention, and what is found in a first visual plane. The background is everything that is not figure, it is not the center of attention, and tends not to be perceived as it is in a second visual plane. When skiing, we constantly adjust our vision from figure to background and vice versa. If we focus on the figure, the background becomes blurred and vice versa. The expert skier focuses the figure but could also be conscious of the background. The beginner instead, by focusing the figure does not have the full conscience of the background.
In skiing, the perception of what sticks out could be strong, like a specific bump (figure) on a mogul field (background), a specific tree in the woods, an immediate slalom gate related to more distant further down the course, a certain skier contrasting with others, or an exaggerated movement compared to skiing global mobility.
Visual Reaction Time
It refers to our quickness to respond to a visual stimulus that emerges and it could be considered as an anticipatory visual ability, being directly related to our motor reaction time. It is the elapsed time from the beginning of the stimulus visual appearance to the implementation of our response and for this, the communication speed between our brain, spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system is essential. There is a great difference between the quickness of an expert skier visual reaction time compared with a beginner skier, which obviously can be improved with training. Our visual reaction is altered by reduced visibility conditions like fog, snow storms or flat light as well as distractions, anxiety, low contrast or the location of an emergent stimulus in the visual field.
Visual Spatial Anticipation
It is previewing the space that will occupy our trajectory. It is easier to drive a car following a road than choosing a path on the snow where we can turn almost in any place, so this visual skill is essential. Because he has not developed spatial anticipation yet, the beginner experiences a rejection to the downhill and tends to finish his turns in advance.
Other Vision-related Aspects
Vision also collaborates in our temporal anticipation that refers to when we will perform the action. The time fraction required to develop a certain action is conditioned by the visual factor and can increase or decrease our margin for error. Using spatial and temporal predictions allows us to organize our own actions in advance.
It is also related to our motor anticipation in the conceptual part (thinking before) as well as in the execution part (acting before).
As skiing actions are guided by vision, our gaze has a crucial role in this aspect, participating in our movement image which is mentally built by us to define our motor performance.
Muscle tone tends to increase while decreasing the visual field by external causes like low visibility or by fogged glasses or goggles.
Also, our vision gets directly involved in vision-action dissociation as,for example, not looking at the skis is the basis of flow, so it is better to perceive them through our sensory system or by our peripheral vision.
According to these considerations, you can apply the following recommendations in your own skiing:
- Practicing visual discrimination of differences will help you judge different snow types in terms of shades and textures.
- Working on visual discrimination by preference will benefit you while observing the best line down in a mogul field leaving aside the slope tilt.
- Using an advance global visual interpretation will allow you to interpret beforehand the bumps’ size as well as its snow conditions.
- By exercising your visual memory, you can differentiate snow types in terms of textures, relating it to distinct friction properties or memorizing a slalom course layout before the competition.
- Implementing your anticipatory visual ability will help you improve your visual reaction time.
- If you experience rejection to the downhill or tend to finish your turns in advance, then you will need to improve your visual spatial anticipation to preview the space that your trajectory will occupy.
- If flow is a concern in your skiing, it may due because your vision is not dissociated from your actions. Avoid looking at your skis, instead, just perceive them with your sensory system or with your peripheral vision.
