Exercise 6 - Visual Perception 1 - Top-Down Visual Processing

(image source: easyexpat.com - http://easyexpat.blogexpat.com/blog/expat-trends/2009/08/14/languages-of-the-world)

This world language map relates to my area of study -- Visual Communication Design -- and is designed for top-down visual processing in that it aids in the accomplishment of a specific cognitive goal of the viewer, namely to discover demographic information related to language use by geographical area. In order to accomplish this goal, the viewer uses attention-driven vision to fixate on a language of interest and matches it to a country by using the color-coded key. Alternately, the viewer can fixate on a country or continent of interest and then refer to the key to discover which language(s) is/are spoken there. Using the process of active vision (in which vision is integrated with cognitive faculties), the viewer can link and re-link the visual information with prior knowledge -- such as the ethnic composition of different geographical areas -- to add depth and context to the information presented. As is typical of top-down visual processing, the viewer tends to bias his or her attention toward a small area of an image while allowing the rest to recede from consciousness. Instead of taking in the entire image as a whole, the viewer's attention is narrowed and sharpened through the use of "Just-in-Time Visual Queries", in which the viewer focuses only on those aspects of his or her environment which are of immediate consequence to the cognitive task at hand. The map's design facilitates this approach through its use of color coding and simple, easily intelligible graphics, which allow to viewer to intuitively focus on one area or another, with little need for laborious scanning techniques.