Fast moving things appearing to slow down

Throughtout my life I have worked on and off on high speed production lines as a maintenance mechanic. When I first started as a teenager I was set back by how fast everything seemed to be moving. The longer I worked on that line the slower it seemed to go and the better I was able to see little intricate movements or misteps in the product or machine. What is it about our brain that allows this to happen. I have also noticed when watching wild life that a slight flick of the tail or wing movement is all that is needed to identify the bird or animal I am watching. Not sure if that is the same thing working or not. I suspect it is the same thing that allows predators to avoid snake bites or how to counter attack when fighting other equally fast animals.

I think is is just practice, experience and just plain improving your skill. Learning.
Those pro baseball sluggers probably have some natural talent and great eyesight but hitting 90MPH+ fastballs time and again isn’t something you’re born with.
You probably don’t sound out typical English words when reading much anymore, either.

I have stood mesmerized by manufacturing machines like spring formers, welding robots, plastics molding presses, electronic component pick&place stations and even basic box folding machines. It just looks impossible to get all those parts to move just right and tune it all up to blur speed. But spend a lot of time around one and you get the hang of how each system in the machine works and interacts with the other systems. Once you get this, you’ll recognize when one part of the thing is off, either by seeing the faulty system itself or its effects on the other systems it interacts with.

Exhausted after sixteen straight hours of highway driving, I hit the brakes too hard after another car cut me off. I was on a curve doing seventy and the road was wet. I overcorrected and the car started to spin. It went a full 810 degrees, during which I had time to run out of patience waiting to see what would happen: I just wanted it to hurry up and hit something and be done with it. It was so slow it was ridiculous, but it couldn’t have really been long at all. I kept a firm grip on the wheel and firm steady pressure on the brake, bracing myself for the impact. The car stopped perpendicular to the road, neatly in the soft dirt of the median, without a scratch. There were no other cars around and I pulled back onto the highway and kept going.
I guess it was some kind of survival instinct. I had plenty of time to survey the situation and react.

Thats a good example, yours happened instantly because something kicked in, my less critical experience happened more slowly but the effect was very similar.
I am wondering if something kicks in to make us do this and stays kicked in or can we turn it off and on unconciously. I imagine all of us do it and are not even aware we are doing it. I actually have a reason fr asking this. I am thinking of doing some high speed photgraphy to analyize a particular movement. My thoughts are if I just watch it over and over day after day I may reach a point I can do a better job than stop motion and making comparisons and such. I would imagine I need to find just that right speed for best observation.

The observation of the production line reminds me of learning a language. At first it seems too fast to even distinguish individual sounds, but as you learn words you become able to pick them out and can hear the spaces between them and you realize that people are not talking at breakneck speed.

What type of movement are you trying to analyze?
I’d film it and watch it in super-slow motion, gradually increasing with each rewatch until it felt right.