Week #2 Exercise: Top-Down Visual Processing

Top-Down Visual Processing is used on a daily basis, multiple times a day.  Walking around campus, most, if not all people, will scan the area they are walking around or towards for a familiar silhouette of a person they know or a type of person they are interested in.  Once a match has been found, whether it be a friend or a person of interest, you will start to look at the details of the person.  For example, if someone is enticed by nice eyes, this person may notice the way someones eyes are before anything else.  They may look at the eyes, then their smile, hair, etc. in whatever way it is prioritized in their mind which would later on lead to scan paths that go back and forth to the person's eyes.  In more ways than one, we always focus in on an area of fixation.  Once we have observed that area, our eyes will start to jump around, like what was shown with the eye-tracking demonstrations.


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