- Information Processing
- Perception
- Top-Down Processing
Top-Down Processing
By Victoria Rousay, published Jan 21, 2021
- Top-down processing is perceiving the world around us by drawing from what we already know in order to interpret new information [Gregory, 1970].
- Top-down theories are hypotheses-driven, and stress the importance of higher mental processes such as expectations, beliefs, values and social influences.
- 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.
- Gregorys 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.
- 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.
Table of contents
- What is top-down processing?
- Why we use top-down processing?
- Influences on top-down processing
- Examples of top-down processing
- Bayesian Approach
What is Top-Down Processing?
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.
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.
These frameworks, also known as schemas, are constructed from past experiences, prior knowledge, emotions, and expectations [Piaget, 1953].
Why we use Top-Down Processing?
British psychologist Richard Gregory [1970] proposed that the process of perception is constructive and is dependent upon top-down processing in order to interpret new information.
He argued that the use of sensory information alone is an insufficient form of perceptual processing as the majority of information [over 90%] is lost between the time new stimuli reaches the eye and arrives to the brain, requiring the use of contextual information from prior knowledge and experiences to properly perceive information.