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The stimulus itself can be altered in such away that it is more likely to be seen as one figure than another.Even though both objects can be recognized, perception of one can bestrengthened through altering its characteristics. The role of bottom-up processing can also have a strong effect onwhat people perceive. In their report, they simply compiled theresults of several studies and explained how the data supported theimportance of top-down processing on visual perception. The importance of top-downprocessing on figure recognition was further supported in a report byLong and Toppino (1994). Both of these studies show a strong influence oftop-down processing on figure recognition. For instance, ifthe figures in the image were two animals, participants would be morelikely to recognize the animal facing the direction of motion.Bernstein and Cooper (1997)further demonstrated this effect in astudy showing the same bias when reversible figures were moved in alogical direction. When the image was shown while moving in aparticular direction, participants were more likely to identify thefigure that would logically move in that direction. Participantswere shown reversible figures in which both figures could beassociated with motion. This gives us anidea of how strong the top-down influence on visual processing canbe.Īnother example of this influence can be seen in a study thatdemonstrated the effect of logical motion on these figureidentifications (McBeath, Morikawa, and Kaiser, 1992).
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After drawing the image theyinitially perceived, participants were even told what the other imagewas, and still could not identify it in their sketch, even though thedrawings were not very dissimilar from the original. For example, Thomas (1999) demonstrated thatparticipants who were shown a reversible figure briefly, and thenwere asked to sketch the figure they perceived, could not identifythe other figure from their sketch. This influence has been shown to bequite strong. The term top-down processing refers to the expectations, memories,biases and general upper-level influence the brain has on perception.If a person views an ambiguous figure and is predisposed to see onefigure instead of the other, then this top-down predisposition canaffect the way he sees the image. Using this type of stimulus,researchers can manipulate both the expectations of the participantprior to viewing the figure, or the actual physical characteristicsof the figure itself, biasing recognition of one image over theother. One of the most famous examples of this type of figureis the "face-vase" figure introduced by Danish psychologist EdgarRubin in 1915 (Goldstein, 1999). The idea of this separation of images is commonly referred toas "figure-ground reversal", and was a major influence of Gestaltpsychologists. Only oneimage in the reversible figure can be perceived at one time, allowingresearchers to examine a recordable response from participants( Stark,1999). Ambiguous figures are stimulithat contain two perceivable images that seem to reverse. One way to measure the differences inthese two types of processing is to present a stimulus to people thatcan be perceived in more than one way. If a perception is influencedby what a person expects, or has experienced before, it is referredto as "top-down" influence. Perceptionsinfluenced by the visual field itself, or changes in stimuli arereferred to as "bottom-up" influences. Oneway of studying the way that memory and experience interact withperception is to look at the differences in true object perceptionand perceptions influenced by memory and experience.
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Understanding the waymemories, experiences and expectations are perceived can enhance theway we view perception as a whole through better understanding. The influence of the human brain on visual perception is largelystudied in the field of psychology today. (Paper compiled from individual papers written by theseven student in PSY 440, Spring 2000) Top-Down v Bottom-up Experiment Paper Investigating the Relative Influence of Top-Downversus Bottom-Up Processing on Viewing Ambiguous Figures