Gestalt Principles of Perception

Perceptual Organization

One of the hallmarks of perception is organization. The brain organizes sensory information to facilitate meaningful interpretation by organizing the vast amount of sensory information into meaningful units.

Gestalt Psychology

• A group of German and Austrian researchers in the 1920s and 1930s studied how sensations were organized into percepts, calling it perceptual organization.
• These researchers were called Gestalt psychologists.
• The word "Gestalt" in German translates to "form" or "shape."
• Gestalt psychologists argued that in perception, the whole (the percept) is greater than the sum of its sensory parts.
• The attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation.
• The brain uses perceptual rules consistently, automatically, and unconsciously to organize sensory input into meaningful wholes.

Laws of Perceptual Organization

Law of Similarity

• The brain tends to group together similar elements.
• Example: Arrays of dots.
  • In a 6x6 array of red dots, it's hard to discern rows or columns.
  • When some dots are changed to blue, the brain groups the blue dots together and red dots together, and most people perceive columns.

Law of Proximity

• Objects that are in close physical proximity to one another tend to be grouped together.
• If objects are closer together, they tend to be grouped together.

Law of Good Continuation

• Stimuli are organized into continuous lines or patterns as much as possible rather than being perceived as discontinuous elements.
• Example: A pile of rope.
  • We see a continuous rope (round and around) rather than discontinuous elements.
  • This is because it is the simplest interpretation.

Law of Closure

• Wherever possible, people tend to perceive incomplete figures as complete.
• If part of a familiar shape or pattern is missing, our brains will fill in the missing part to complete the pattern.
• Example: Kanizsa triangle.
  • Most people perceive two triangles (one white and one brown), even though there is no physically present white triangle.
  • The illusory triangle exists due to the law of closure.

Law of Familiarity

• Things are more likely to be grouped if the groups appear familiar or meaningful.
• Example: Painting by Bev Doolittle with faces hidden in the image.
  • There are 13 faces in the picture.
  • The only real faces belong to the rider and two horses, but there are faces to be perceived throughout the image.

Law of Common Fate

• Things that move together appear to be grouped together.
• Example: A row of nine smiley faces.
  • When they aren't moving, you see the smiley faces as one long line.
  • When they move, you see them as three shorter lines.

Gestalt Principles as Heuristics

• Gestalt principles reflect how the brain organizes sensory information to create a perceptual experience that reflects the regularities of nature.
• They are not truly laws but rather rules of thumb or heuristics.
• Based on our experience of how the world works.
• Applied unconsciously to help ease and speed up our perception of the world.
• Usually lead to a correct interpretation of the world, but occasionally misleading and can lead to incorrect perceptions.