Which one of the following examples demonstrates bottom-up processing?

• A. A person interprets a blurry image as a face because they expect to see faces in the picture.
• B. A person reads a word more quickly because it appears in the context of a familiar sentence.
• C. A person sees a series of random shapes and gradually recognizes a dog as the brain organizes the sensory input.
• D. A person recognizes a song because they have heard it many times before and expect certain notes.

Answer: (C)

Verified step by step guidance

1. Understand the concept of bottom-up processing: it refers to perception that starts with incoming sensory data, where the brain builds up a perception from the raw sensory input without relying on prior knowledge or expectations.
2. Review each example and identify whether the perception is driven primarily by sensory input (bottom-up) or by prior knowledge, expectations, or context (top-down).
3. For the first example, note that interpreting a blurry image as a face because of expectation involves prior knowledge, so it is top-down processing.
4. For the second example, reading a word faster due to sentence context also relies on prior knowledge and expectations, indicating top-down processing.
5. For the third example, recognizing a dog from random shapes as the brain organizes sensory input is a clear case of bottom-up processing, as perception arises from the sensory data itself without prior expectations.