PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Ames Room, Ponzo Illusion, Visual System
18 Apr 2015
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. People perceive the whole stimulus rather than just putting together a collection of the stimulus" parts. Gestalt movement was a reaction to the structuralist approach. Suggested that everything could be reduced to basic elements. Gestalt principles: laws that describe how we organize visual input. These laws are thought to be innate or that we acquire them rapidly. Figure -ground: ability to determine what aspect of a visual scene forms the object and what forms the background. Proximity: elements that are close together in space tend to belong together. Closure: if there are gaps in the contours of a shape, we fill in those gaps to perceive a whole object. Similarity: tendency for us to group together elements that are physically similar. Continuity: lets us perceive a simple, continuous form as opposed to combination of awkward forms.
