Can you realize "top-down" and "bottom-up" ARE [ or certainly can, if not MUST, be ] THE SAME THINGS at important junctures IN ONTOGENY (child development)?
This Question is NOT addressing YOU (the "self"), your social relations and activities, NOR your language. This question is about the biological processes SHOWN IN BEHAVIOR PATTERNS _PER_ _SE_ of the organism (aka "just 'behavior' "), DURING ONTOGENY, and beginning in overt and observable ways. As words are tools, to express certain things, sometimes (and even and especially at some critical times) the words used will seem contradictory or an oxymoron ,(e.g. it is hard to truly well-imagine a case of perception beginning thought). This cannot be viewed as a real problem. SO: at important key 'shift' points in development, what we CONCEPTUALIZE as "top-down", may have their actual key inception in what, in the highly [overt] behavior-related processes, may fundamentally have to be seen as "BOTTOM-UP". Major (if not THE major) shifts in behavior PATTERNS during cognitive development (of emerging seemingly qualitatively different stages/levels) may certainly have their inceptions in BASIC perceptual shifts (actually seeing new things or some things in a significantly new framing perspective AS new (or, in other words, the latter: "as seen anew")). [(THIS is seen as possible, if not necessary, if only by the reasoning processes of EXCLUSION -- if you are an empiricist/scientist.)]
With this perspective: the UN-defined bases of cognitive stages (equilibrium type 2, the balance between the stages and the point allowing for the stage shifts) is both more simple AND more researchable (with eye tracking) than anything conceived in academia heretofore. In short, this perspective is much more strictly empircial AND TESTABLE. [ Piaget clearly, yet ultimately, ONLY ever said one thing about such stage shifts: that they were "due to maturation" -- Piaget realized this was the most serious deficiency in his theory to the end of his days (explaining why his LAST BOOK was on Equilibration). Piaget was big on "formal logic", which inherently, as applied, results in embracing limited content -- for THAT (as applied) is OF our normative conceptual system, not of independent, actual real biological systems).]
To get more perspective of my view and approach, _start_ at: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_an_ethological-developmental_theory_of_cognitive_processes_and_of_cognition and READ all the Answers (follow-ups) and "go from there".
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