ABSTRACT
When we experience art, we do not merely take in and process raw sensory input (“bottom-up” processing). A wealth of knowledge and associations influences how we perceive and evaluate art, too. The influence of these so-called “top-down” processes is evident in three phenomena: (1) the idiosyncratic nature of aesthetic evaluations, (2) the influence of expertise on art experiences, and (3) the involvement of neural networks in aesthetic evaluations that are distinct from those needed for perceptual processing. In this chapter, I review research on top-down processing in the context of the arts along these three lines of research. This includes an overview of theories and the role they assign to top-down processing, a review of current empirical findings that cast light on top-down processing, and a discussion on the questions left unanswered as well as future directions for the research on top-down processing in art experiences.
