A few days ago, I came home from work, pulled up to my house. Got out of my car and stepped onto my driveway. I immediately smelled a very strong and pungent odor which I quickly and clearly recognized as gas. Instinctively I thought that I had a gas leak somewhere around my house. I immediately conjured up wicked thoughts and numerous awful images, let’s just say they were rather ridiculous and horror movie type images that I won’t go into.
After calling the gas company, who I might add came quite quickly to my residence, insured me that yes, the innocuous smell was indeed gas however the source of the odor was not coming from my property but rather from the street. After I bombarded the gentlemen with all the obvious questions and of all the possible outcomes that could occur due to the perceived gas leak, the gentlemen gave me a quick science lesson on the workings of the gas lines.
They assured me I had nothing to worry and told me that when you smell gas in one location it’s not always the source since the odor will travel and hover in another location especially when it’s cold outside and when this occurs it will you think the source of the leak is in one spot rather than another.
This whole experience really drove home the top-down processing concept to me. The basis for top-down processing as mentioned in our textbook, “Perception involves factors such as a person’s knowledge of their environment, the expectations people bring to the perceptual situation, and their attention to specific stimuli” (Goldstein, 2015, pp.59-60). Because I relied on existing knowledge about gas, and the expectations that smelling gas may generate a dangerous response, I was able to make an educated guess as to what I was smelling and handle the situation.
In conclusion, we are constantly surrounded by sensory images some good and some bad. Without being consciously aware, my perception of the situation was influenced by what I knew. This all stemming from information knowledge, expectations, and experience with gas and using past experiences to guide and interpret the information helped me to decipher what I was smelling and how to react.
References:
Goldstein, E. B. (2015). Cognitive psychology: connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (4th ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
References
Goldstein, E. B. (2017). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting Mind, Research, and Everyday Experience (4th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning
This is a very good example of Top Down processing. Our past experiences and knowledge often dictate our perception of a situation. Herman von Helmholtz’s likelihood principle tells us that we perceive the object that we believe is most likely to have caused the stimuli we have encountered, and that this is due to unconscious assumptions we make about what we see. (Goldstein, 2017). I have read quite a few newspaper articles about the dangers of gas leaks and often worry whenever I smell the faintest whiff of gas. I imagine horrible things that could happen in that situation. We cannot escape the conscious as well as unconscious understandings we encounter during Top Down Processing.