Using the ideas of top-down and bottom-up processing, describe a recent event in your life and how you used each of these processes throughout the event.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Student answers will vary. A sample answer follows.
The day I got married, I used top-down processing to perceive much of what was around me. I used my knowledge of the world when I perceived the flowers. I had seen many types of flowers, and I had described to the florist what I wanted. So, I imposed that information on the flowers that arrived at the venue. The proximal stimulus in my mind (my vision of what the flowers should look and smell like) provided an accurate representation of the distal stimulus in my environment (what the real-life flowers looked and smelled like). That same day, I used bottom-up processing when features in my environment selectively activated neurons in my visual cortex. I saw what appeared to be strangers. Because I had no proximal stimulus related to them, I had to use geons to construct my perception of them. Soon I found out that they were uninvited guests.