"The goal of information design must be to design displays so that visual queries are processed both rapidly and correctly for every important cognitive task the display is intended to support."
In this example of top-down visual processing, the first and immediate thought the viewer has is that, "this is a table." Top-down visual processing is viewing an object or a scene with a goal in mind, and although part of the brain's activity is focused on assessing available information, the other part is attention-driven, focusing on a specific goal. In this case, the viewer may have the goal to use this table for decoration, or as a sturdy place to set something. The most relevant information to the viewer is one, that this is a table and two, that it's designed to look like an orange. So the viewer uses the information that they just gathered from initial observation and directing it with whatever focus they are driven by, and what results is a matter of focusing on the relevant bits of the table, and ignoring the irrelevant parts. For example, the table's legs are under-highlighted and probably would not serve a greater purpose, therefore in top-down processing the legs are likely to be the last thing the person notices. In contrast, the table top can serve several purposes, and therefore is the focus in top-down visual processing.
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