Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

 Bottom-up processing 
consists of the progression of recognizing and processing 
information from individual components of a stimuli and moving to the perception 
of the whole. We would make no headway in our recognition of the sentence without 
being able to perceive the individual shapes that make up the letters. Some perception, 
then, occurs at the level of the patterns and features of each of the separate letters.
Top-down and bottom-up processing occur simultaneously, and interact with 
each other, in our perception of the world around us. Bottom-up processing permits 
us to process the fundamental characteristics of stimuli, whereas top-down process-
ing allows us to bring our experience to bear on perception. As we learn more about 
the complex processes involved in perception, we are developing a better under-
standing of how the brain continually interprets information from the senses and 
permits us to make responses appropriate to the environment (Folk & Remington, 
2008; Sobel et al., 2007; Westerhausen et al., 2009).
bottom-up processing
Perception 
that consists of the progression of 
recognizing and processing information 
from individual components of a 
stimuli and moving to the perception 
of the whole.
FIGURE 3 
Although at fi rst it is diffi
cult 
to distinguish anything in this drawing, 
keep looking, and eventually you’ll 
probably be able to see the fi gure of a 
dog. The dog represents a gestalt, or 
perceptual, whole, which is something 
greater than the sum or the individual 
elements.
FIGURE 4 
The power of context is shown in this fi gure. Note how the B and the 13 are 
identical. 
(Source: Coren & Ward, 1989.)
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