Theories of the Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing

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Theories of the Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing Name: Date: Course: Professor: Theories of the Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing Perception is the procedure in by which living things interpret and arrange sensation in to produce a meaningful understanding of the world. Sensation mainly refers to the instantaneous, moderately unrefined result of stimulus of the sensory receptors in the ears, eyes, skin, or tongue. On the other hand, perception is the final experience of the world and essentially involves additional processing of the sensory input. This paper explains the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing. Theories beginning with processing of low-level features are known as bottom-up theories, which are mainly data driven theories. Not all theorists focus on the sensory data of perpetual stimulus, however, many theorists fancy top-down theories, which are determined by a high level cognitive process, on hand knowledge and previous expectations that control perception. Expectations are vital. When people anticipate seeing something, they may see it even if it is not there or is no longer there. For instance, when a person expects to see another in a certain place, they may think that they are seeing them even if they are seeing someone else who looks vaguely similar. Top-down approaches have been used virtually in all features of cognition. As pertains to perception, there are two main theories: they manifest the bottom-up and top-down approaches. These theories are usually presented in opposition to each other. To some extent, they deal with different aspects of the same phenomenon. Ultimately, a complete theory of perception will need to include both the bottom- up and top-down processes (Feldman 2012). Bottom –Up Theories The main bottom-up theories of form and

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