Cognitive Psychology - Perception Pt4 - Top Down Influences

We've previously discussed the "bottom-up" side of perceiving (how our brain goes from detecting very simple features in a stimulus to recognizing more complex combinations of those features), but in this video we see the other half of the story: "top-down" influences on perception, coming from past experience, knowledge, environmental regularities, and so on. We also discuss some basic Gestalt principles and bistable perception.

This is a lecture video for a university course in Cognitive Psychology taught by Dr. Brian W. Stone. You may wish to play it at x1.25 speed. As with anything taught at the undergraduate level the information here may be simplified, and at higher levels of study there is more nuance to all of it.