Psychological Concept of Processing Stimuli Essay

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Introduction

The human brain can perceive and process information about the outside world in different ways. To receive information from the environment, the human brain uses various sensory organs that are part of the sensory system. A particular problem for psychologists is to explain the process by which the physical energy received by the senses forms the basis of perception.

Discussion

Although sensory receptors continually receive information from their surroundings, how a person perceives that information influences how he or she interacts with it. There are two types of processing stimuli: bottom-up and top-down processing (Grison & Gazzaniga, 2022). Bottom-up processing is based on the properties of the information coming from the senses, while top-down is based on the information that the brain already has and includes knowledge and experience. Bottom-up processing is considered one of the core ways people understand the world around them. This process begins with an external stimulus, such as the smell of coffee outside. This information is captured by the sensory system and sent to the brain for analysis. This allows you to determine that if a person caught the smell of coffee while walking down the street, then somewhere nearby, there is a coffee shop. For such a conclusion, a person does not need to know the additional context – it is formed on the basis of information received from the sensory system, and prior knowledge about the location of the coffee shop nearby is not required.

Conclusion

Top-down theories are hypotheses-based and highlight the significance of higher mental processes including expectations, beliefs, values, and social effects. Top-down processing is significantly different and is based on understanding stimuli in relation to previous experience (Grison & Gazzaniga, 2022). A person does not need to examine and study the object with which he interacted before from each side in order to understand its properties. For example, when choosing fruits in a store, people rarely examine each one in detail, due to top-down processing, looking at a beautiful and ripe fruit, we determine that it will turn out to be the same on the other side and inside. Another example would be when a person hears a song in a foreign language, and at that moment they are shown words that are not in the song, but they sound a little similar. Due to top-down processing, a person begins to hear these words in a song even if they have not heard them initially.

References

Grison, S., Gazzaniga, M. (2022). Psychology in your life. (4th ed.). W. W. Norton Incorporated.

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IvyPanda. "Psychological Concept of Processing Stimuli." January 30, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/psychological-concept-of-processing-stimuli/.

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