Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing

Top-down and bottom-up processing refers to the integration of information from one's own cognitive system (top-down) and from the world (bottom-up) to facilitate perception. Imagine that you are preparing for a dinner party, and that you have put a homemade pie in the oven. Some time later, you are in the adjacent dining room, setting the table. The timer goes off and you return to the kitchen to take out the pie. The question posed in the current entry is the following: Upon re-entering the kitchen, how did you “know” which object was the oven? Recognizing the oven may have seemed effortless; however, this ease belies the fact that such recognition results from a complex integration of different processes that each rely on different types ...