Definition
In bottom-up processing, an organism’s perception of a stimulus relates directly to its perceptual features and does not impose a more abstract structure to the conceptualization of the object (as in top-down processing). Bottom-up processing is thus independent of prior experience and knowledge. It is thought to represent lower levels of information processing and to focus on detailed stimulus information compared to the more integrated higher-level information that reflects top-down processing (Rauss and Pourtois 2013). For example, when viewing a rectangle, one would see four lines intersecting rather than representing the rectangle as a depiction of a doorway or a window. Although bottom-up processing is thought to be largely automatic (Theeuwes 2010), the same could be said of some forms of top-down processing; therefore, the automatic/consciously controlled...
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Vonk, J. (2021). Bottom-Up Processing. In: Vonk, J., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1279-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47829-6_1279-1
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