ELT365 · D153 — Top-down vs bottom-up processing

Idea — Top-down processing uses background knowledge and context to predict meaning. Bottom-up processing builds meaning from individual sounds or words.

Example — Hearing ‘gate 7 … delayed … boarding’ at an airport triggers top-down: you infer a flight announcement without decoding every syllable.

Try — Play 10 seconds of any audio without context. Ask: what do you think this is about? That prediction is top-down processing in action.

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