Back to the full dot-point answer
QLDPsychologyQuick questions
Unit 3: Individual thinking
Quick questions on Perception and attention: bottom-up, top-down processing and selective attention (QCE Psychology Unit 3)
3short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is bottom-up processing?Show answer
Bottom-up processing (data-driven processing) begins with the raw sensory input and builds upward into a perception, feature by feature. The stimulus drives the perception. When you encounter a completely novel object with no expectations, you rely heavily on bottom-up processing, assembling edges, colours and shapes into a whole. It is accurate but relatively slow.
What is top-down processing?Show answer
Top-down processing (concept-driven processing) uses existing knowledge, context and expectations to interpret sensory input quickly. Your brain predicts what is likely to be there and fills gaps. This is why you can read text with jumbled internal letters, or hear a muffled word correctly because the sentence makes its meaning obvious.
What is selective attention?Show answer
Attention is the process of focusing cognitive resources on particular stimuli while ignoring others. The capacity of awareness is limited, so attention acts as a filter.
Have a question we have not covered?
This dot-point answer is short enough that we have not extracted many short questions yet. Read the full dot-point answer or ask Mo, our study assistant, in the chat for follow ups.