Friday, 21 June 2013

FORM PERCEPTION

GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION-
Gestalt theory first arouse in 1890 as a reaction to the prevalent psychological theory of the time – atomism. Atomists believed the nature of things to be absolute and not dependent on the context. However, gestalt’s scientists were concerned about the fact about the way our mind perceives wholes out of incomplete elements. According to the Gestalts , things were affected by where they are and what surrounds them. Therefore things are better described as more than the sum of there parts. Gestalts believed that context was very important in form perception.

THE PRINCIPLES OR THE LAWS-

LAW OF PRAGNANZ(figure and ground) –  Edgar Rubin , a Danish psychologist was the first to systematically investigate the figure and ground phenomenon. The phenomenon tells us that in perceiving a visual field , some objects take a prominent roll or the figure while others recede into the background or the ground . The visual field is thus divided into these two basic parts .  One cannot observe both figure and ground at the same time as the ground becomes figure when the focus shifts. A breakdown of figure and ground occurs with camouflage , where the objective is to make the figure so much like the ground that it disappears from the view.




LAW OF SIMILARITY- The principle of similarity states that things which share visual characteristics such as shape, size, color, texture, value or orientation will be seen as belonging together.Just as in the figure 1 below,we see alternate horizontal rows of orange and purple color and not as alternate columns of orange and purple color.Similarly in figure 2, we see the second row as different from the others and not four vertical columns with the second element as bigger than the rest. 

LAW OF PROXIMITY OR CONTIGUITY- The principle of proximity or contiguity sates that things that are closer together will be seen as belonging together.For example,the figure below shows two pairs of elements and not four vertical elements.
LAW OF CONTINUITY- The principle of continuity predicts the preference of perceiving continuous figures.In the figure below we perceive a cross and not four lines meeting at a point.

LAW OF CLOSURE – The principle of closer applies when we tend of see whole or complete figure out of incomplete figure.Like we see in the diagram below,we easily make out it is a circle with missing elements or gaps.

LAW OF AREA-The principle of area states that the smaller of two overlapping figure is perceived as figure while the larger is regarded as ground.In the figure below,we perceive the smaller box as a hole in the bigger box or the bigger box becomes the ground and the smaller tends to be the figure.


LAW OF SYMMETRY-  The principle of symmetry describes the instances where the whole of a figure is perceived rather that the individual part which make up the figure. We perceive the figure below as three sets of bracket and not two paired elements in the middle and two unpaired at the ends.



No comments:

Post a Comment