  The connection between active perception and the limits of performance
provide a path to understanding naturalistic behavior. We can take a
comparative cognitive modeling perspective to understand the limits of this
performance and the existence of superperformance. We will discuss two
categories that are hypothesized to originate in terms of coevolutionary
relationships and evolutionary trade offs: supersamplers and superplanners.
Supersamplers take snapshots of their sensory world at a very high sampling
rate. Examples include flies (vision) and frogs (audition) with ecological
specializations. Superplanners internally store information to evaluate and act
upon multiple features of spatiotemporal environments. Slow lorises and turtles
provide examples of superplanning capabilities. The Gibsonian Information (GI)
paradigm is used to evaluate sensory sampling and planning with respect to
direct perception and its role in capturing environmental information content.
By contrast, superplanners utilize internal models of the environment to
compensate for normal rates of sensory sampling, and this relationship often
exists as a sampling/planning tradeoff. Supersamplers and superplanners can
exist in adversarial relationships, or longer-term as coevolutionary
relationships. Moreover, the tradeoff between sampling and planning capacity
can break down, providing relativistic regimes. We can apply the principles of
superperformance to human augmentation technologies.
