Top down processing example
![top down processing example top down processing example](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/19/da/35/19da35b3a2ab24f8a4b588a8aa48e065.png)
After a closer look, you realize you are looking at a capital B, but your brain chose a number first due to the context of what you were seeing. Or, at least that’s what your brain says when you come across it. You see the number 11, the number 12, and then what appears to be the number 13. Let’s say you are reading a piece of paper. I’ll repeat the example just to refresh your memory, but I’ll start by explaining how this example works using top-down processing.
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In my article about Bottom Up Processing, I used an example to show how top-down processing worked vs. Examples of Top Down Processing in Everyday Life Example 1: B vs. Hence, we realize the rat isn’t just a rat or the man isn’t just the man.
![top down processing example top down processing example](https://image1.slideserve.com/2615896/slide23-l.jpg)
As we gather more details and focus more on different elements of what we are seeing, we could discover that our initial hypotheses aren’t true. Of course, hypotheses are not always true. In order to “fill in the blanks,” the brain uses hypotheses based on what it expects and what it already knows about the world. So we can’t possibly construct our entire perception of what’s in front of us in the direct way that Gibson proposed. Gregory proposed that while the eye does take in a lot of stimuli, most of it is lost by the time it reaches the brain. His theory was mainly realized as a response to Gibson, and he credits Hermann von Helmholtz as the father of this theory. Gregory did not coin the term “top-down processing” or create this idea from scratch. The man responsible for developing this take on visual perception theory is British psychologist Richard Gregory. Then, we begin to break down the visual stimuli and see that yes, this could be a rat or a man or a different drawing altogether. In the Rat-Man example, we start our analysis by seeing the rat or the man based on the context of the situation or our expectations. This is a more holistic way of looking at visual perception. The theory of top-down process was developed just a few years later, and is often explained side by side with bottom-up processing to round out the overarching theories on visual perception. If you watched my last video, you know that top-down processing is a theory that opposes bottom-up processing, which was proposed by James J. This study is just one of many to support the idea of top-down processing. In fact, based on whether or not the image was placed in a pile of animals or faces, participants in a 1961 study were more likely to see the image of the rat or the man. These frameworks, also known as schemas, are constructed from past experiences, prior knowledge, emotions, and expectations (Piaget, 1953).
![top down processing example top down processing example](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a0/89/cb/a089cb2f6df91c7b401fe80c71701a6c.jpg)
Thus, top-down processing is using the contextual information of things that we already know or have already experienced in combination with our senses to perceive new information.In top-down processing, perceptions are interpreted from individual frameworks that help us perceive and interpret information. Top-down processing involves the brain 'sending down' stored information to the sensory system as it receives information from the stimulus, enabling a plausible hypothesis to be made without the need to analyze every feature of the stimulus. In other words, the use of our senses to perceive incoming information is not enough and the use of prior knowledge and experiences is necessary in order to hypothesize the meanings of new information.Gregory’s theory argues that because of the ceaseless stream of stimuli that we are required to process every day, equally attending to each sensation would be entirely too demanding and overwhelm us as individuals.Throughout our lifetime we construct schemas, which consist of past experiences, prior knowledge, emotions, and expectations, and then use these schemas to form hypotheses upon the arrival of new information.Top-down theories are hypotheses-driven, and stress the importance of higher mental processes such as expectations, beliefs, values and social influences.Top-down processing is perceiving the world around us by drawing from what we already know in order to interpret new information (Gregory, 1970).By Victoria Rousay, published Jan 21, 2021