PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Ames Room, Optical Illusion, Ice Cream Cone
24 Jan 2018
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Document Summary
Distinguishing figure from background is a complex visual function. The gestalt philosophy - the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Believed that people perceive the whole stimulus rather than each individual part. A reaction to the structuralist approach (everything could be reduced to basic elements) Movies are made from quickly flashing static pictures. Motion is an emergent property of a sequence of pictures. Gestalt principles - laws that describe how we organize visual input. Seeing a vase of flowers against a flower wallpaper is an example of figure-ground. Figures tend to have distinct borders that give it form over the background. Separation of figure from ground is a perceptual process, accomplished by the brain. We naturally see regions of high density as one group due to proximity. We are more likely to group objects that are closer together than far apart. We automatically fill in the parts we can"t see to perceive a single object.
