no references needed***
What situation have you experienced where top-down influences have had a role in your perception of something in your environment, or in your perception of a situation? Describe this situation and what happened, and maybe how your subjective perception happened to be different than the objective sensation you received (e.g. maybe someone said something to you and you heard something else, maybe because of the way you were feeling emotionally at the moment), or your perception was different than someone else’s (e.g. you perceived a brown cat when everyone saw a gray cat).

2. What was the specific “top-down influence” on that perception? For example, was is the context of the situation or the expectation of what was going to happen next? Was is your emotions influencing your perception? What is your cognitive abilities, or prior experiences?