Ms. van dale is trying to read regan's essay, but the handwriting is really small and letters are crunched together. she can make out the pattern of some of regan's letters, and is guessing at the others. what type of processing is ms. van dale using?

This is bottom-down processing, which means taking sensory information (the bits and pieces of the words that she can read) and integrating it with her knowledge base to try to make sense of what she is reading. Fill-in-the-blanks are another example of bottom down processing: you know a few of the letters and words and have to use your existing knowledge to determine what it means.