TopDown and BottomUp Processing EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY GUIDEDINQUIRY LEARNING
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY GUIDED-INQUIRY LEARNING Module: Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing © 2017, Dr. B. Rumain & Dr. A. Geliebter, Touro College & University System
MOTIVATION Scenario 1: Suppose you are staying in a hotel in the Catskills, and then you are speaking with your friend and the friend says, “You know, I hear that hotel had bedbugs. ” After you get off the phone, you notice this bug crawling in the hotel lobby. Someone asks you, “What do you think this bug is? ” It wouldn’t be surprising if you said “a bedbug. ” (By the way, it’s not. )
Scenario 2: You are taking a Biology lab and the instructor gives you the above bug to look at and asks how you would go about identifying it. What do you think the bug is?
LEARNING OBJECTIVES 1. You will understand be able to explain top-down processing. 2. You will understand be able to explain bottom-up processing. 3. You will understand some of the factors that predispose to top-down processing.
INFORMATION Think about how the two scenarios above differ in terms of what the individual comes into the situation with and then responds as a consequence. Write down your answer. .
IN Scenario 1, you use your background knowledge in your perception to conclude (wrongly so) that the bug is a bedbug. This type of processing when the cognitive framework and background knowledge influences perception is called top-down processing.
IN Scenario 2, our perception is data driven—it is influenced by the properties of the stimulus only. This is called bottom-up processing.
Read the following study and answer the questions at the end. Source: APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, 19: 799– 809, 2005, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Abstract Twenty-seven participants made a total of 2, 484 judgments whether a pair of fingerprints matched or not. A quarter of the trials acted as a control condition. The rest of the trials included top-down influences aimed at biasing the participants to find a match. These manipulations included emotional background stories of crimes and explicitly disturbing photographs from crime scenes, as well as subliminal messages.
Abstract (continued) The data revealed that participants were affected by the top-down manipulations and as a result were more likely to make match judgments. However, the increased likelihood of making match judgments was limited to ambiguous fingerprints. The top-down manipulations were not able to contradict clear non-matching fingerprints. Hence, such contextual information actively biases the ways gaps are filled, but was not sufficient to override clear bottom-up information.
Design All participants were tested in all conditions. There were two levels of stimuli difficulty (ambiguous vs. unambiguous) and four levels of top-down influence (a control with no emotional influence, low emotion stories and photographs, high emotion stories and photographs, and the highest level of top-down influence that includes the high emotion stories and photographs as well as subliminal messages in addition). The dependent variables were the number of matches made in each condition (i. e. number of times the participant made a ‘same’ decision).
Design (continued) Figure 3: Examples of low emotion (top panel) and high emotion (bottom panel) provoking photographs
Results A two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out with Stimuli Type (ambiguous vs. non-ambiguous) and Top-Down Manipulation (control, low emotion, high emotion, and high emotion/subliminal) as within variables. Of main interest was a significant interaction we found between Stimuli Type and Top-Down Manipulation…. . This interaction reflected that the Top-Down Manipulation affected decisions on matching fingerprints, but that this effect varied with the different Stimuli Type. There were no significant main effects for Stimuli Type and Top-Down Manipulation (p>0. 05) by themselves.
Results (continued) When we examined the ambiguous Stimuli Type, where there was no objectively correct response, a different picture emerged. We found a significant effect with matches differing across the experimental manipulations. Participants found a match in 47%, 49%, 58%, and 66% of the trials, respectively for the control, low emotion, high emotion, and high emotion + subliminal Top-Down Manipulations. These analyses together reflected the source of the interaction we found in our overall analysis; namely, that decisions only varied with the Top. Down Manipulation when judgments were made on the ambiguous Stimuli Type.
Discussion The aim of the current study was to investigate the possible effects of top-down processing in interfering with bottom-up identification of fingerprints. We focused on emotion and subliminal messages as our top-down manipulations… Using our top-down manipulations we wanted to examine whether they can affect decisions in matching fingerprints. Furthermore, if they are able to make such an impact, we were interested to see the potential strength and scope of this affect.
Discussion (continued) Our findings did show that when the fingerprints to be matched were ambiguous, the top-down component had effects on the decisions being made. Thus, the top-down component was able to bias how gaps are filled but did not have the power to override clear bottom-up incoming information. Top-down components may well be able to override and contradict clear bottom-up information, but this may only occur under very specific circumstances…
EXERCISES 1. Explain what constitutes top-down processing in the study here. 2. Explain what constitutes bottom-up processing in the study here 3. What were the independent variables? the dependent variables? 4. Draw a Latin Square to show all the conditions involved.
EXERCISES (continued) 5. What was the control condition? 6. What was the top-down manipulation? When subjects were affected by it, what decision were they likely to make about the fingerprints? 7. When were subjects more likely to use top-down processing?
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