Involves association of small details,

may take time, efficient at storing and retrieving info, limited in capacity, ill-defined categories of stimuli, enables us to see novel stimuli, very affect by context, categorical in its response, and may interact with personality

Top down processing

Template Theory

(bottom-up theory)

Sternberg: memory search is a serial exhaustive process. Items in memory are retrieved and compared with the test item one after the other.

Neisser: Parallel scanning- all items in memory are available for comparison at once

- hierarchy of detectors

image demons

feature demons

cognitive demons

decision demons

- evidence from stabilized image experiments and physiological experiments

there is a cell in the brain that represents every object that we can perceive

Ex. patient who responded to image and letter name of Halle Berry

Analysis-by-Synthesis Theory

(top down theory)

visual system analyzes the image and tests for basic features called primitives and each primitive can be represented in a mental map immediately, simultaneously, and w/o need for additional cognitive processing.

(during this stage primitives are not connected together to form an object but instead independent)

curvature,

tilt,

color,

line ends,

movement,

closed areas,

contrast,

brightness

Illusory conjunctions

(evidence for independence of primitives at the preattentive stage)