Do Studies of Visual Illusion Demonstrate the Importance of Conceptually Driven Processes?

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Do Studies of Visual Illusion Demonstrate the Importance of Conceptually Driven Processes?

By Fiona Dyer

In a word, yes. Conceptually driven processing is also referred to as top-down processing. It refers to the dependence on prior knowledge or our expectations concerning the incoming stimulation. An example of when conceptually driven processes are in action is when we see a face. Once the image has entered the eye our previous built up knowledge of human faces can guide us into actually recognising the image as a face. Therefore ‘conceptually driven processes uses a higher level of conceptual processes which include such things as memories of past experiences, general organisational strategies, knowledge of the world and expectations based upon the surrounding context or situation’ Coren, Porac and Ward (1978).

Having said that, there is another process which takes place in visual perception other than conceptually driven processes. You can not talk about conceptually driven processing without mentioning data driven processes. Data driven processes can also be known as bottom up processing. This basically refers to the stimulus input having a direct affect. This stimulus drives a series of analysis’s and the looking for distinctive features e.g. shape, colour, size etc. It is often believed that both conceptually driven processes and data driven processes work together.

Conceptually driven processing uses many types of information to interpret what is being observed. One such thing is context. A good study which helps demonstrate the role of conceptually driven processes uses context. Mandler and Parker (1976) showed participants a picture of a living room. Later on the same participants were asked to reconstruct the picture they had seen earlier but were now scrambled. This was an easy task to perform. However, Mandler and Parker (1976) also asked to participants to reconstruct the scrambled picture having not seen the earlier unscrambled image. Even though they had not seen the original image they all managed to reconstruct the picture correctly. Mandler and Parker (1976) argue this reflects the use of conceptual framework based upon our experience with real world scenes.

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However this is just an example of looking and reconstructing something that we are used to and have seen many times. It is intriguing to find out what processes take place when a visual illusion is being observed. People’s perceptions are called illusion when they experience a stimulus pattern in a manner that’s seems incorrect. For example when you look at the Hermann grid (appendix 1) you begin to see fuzzy spots that are not there. It is suggested that our knowledge can not overcome the illusion, because it operates at a more basic, sensory level. Therefore when you ...

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