Bottoms Up

            I often have to blink my eyes several times when I see something that surprises me. Recognition is a key element of our human culture. How we perceive something determines how we will act, react, or feel. There are certain ways our mind interprets things we encounter in the world. Our mind can fundamentally follow one of two approaches: bottom-up or top down processing. These processes are the basis for all human behavior. .
             These processes of pattern recognition differ in several ways. Although they are both about perceiving things, they each conceptualize how your mind distinguishes what it recognizes. Essentially, the bottom-up process involves perceiving things based on stimulus or pattern recognition. The top-down approach focuses on having an expectation, which stimulates the mind based on past experiences (Baron, 118). Everything our eyes perceive follows one of these approaches.
             Studying Gestalt psychologist's Laws of Perceptual Grouping, we can easily recognize the different recognition approaches. The Gestaltist's laws of grouping suggest what our brain will do when we see certain shape configurations. For example, when we see four perpendicular separate lines that together form a square, our top-down perception allows us to recognize the formation and apply the label "square" to it. If we were to perceive the lines through our bottom- up processing, we would only see the lines as separate figures with no relation. In this particular circumstance, we would naturally use our top-down processing. Our mind has the ability to distinguish the two and, based on the object, apply the correct process. Although technically both processes would provide meaning, only the top-down would correctly define the image. The bottom-up approach could produce errors if we weren't meant to view something as a whole but simply as its parts. Trying to see specific star formations in the sky is a good example of how bottom-up processing could be problematic.