Figure 3.9 Perceptual Organization and Top-down Processing Do you see a meaningful object in this figure? There is one. It is a cow staring directly at you. Can you find it? To do so, your perceptual top-down processing mechanisms will have to organize some of the features of the figure to match your knowledge of what a cow looks like. If you are having trouble locating the cow, its head occupies most of the left half of the figure, and its body, the right half. Once you see it, you won’t have any difficulty seeing it the next time. Your top-down processing mechanisms will know how to organize the features so you perceive it. (Adapted from Dallenbach, 1951.)
From American Journal of Psychology. Copyright 1951 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.