Processing is when what you sense becomes perception, with no influence of expectations or previous experiences. However, processing is when your expectations or previous experiences influence what you perceive.

Top-down processing

Explanation:

Top-down processing is a process involved in perception and sensation.

Top-down processing is a process by which the brain provides information about the environment to the senses. It is a cognitive process that is initiated by one's expectations, thoughts or previous experiences which then flows down to lower level functions like senses. In contrast, bottom- up processing involves the processes by which one's sense provides information about the environment to the brain.

For example, an individual is able to understand a difficult handwriting when reading complete sentences compared to when reading single words, this because the meaning of some words in the complete sentences will aid understanding of the sentence context. This is an example of top-down processing.