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Psychology / Unit 4   Psych 0377 short lesson, about 20 seconds

Top-Down Processing

Captions available

The idea

Top-down processing uses existing knowledge and expectation to interpret incoming sensory data.

In practice

A misspelled word in a familiar sentence is read as correct without the error registering.

Where people slip

Top-down processing is not error. It is what makes reading fast, and the same mechanism produces the mistake.

Your place on the trail

Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.

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