Talk:Gestalt psychology

Contributions

This article needs illustrations--crucial to teaching about Gestalt. Thanks! Dpr 02:42, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Comment by someone else

The statement about the soap bubble is wrong. I know nothing about Gestalt Psychology, but a lot about math. There IS a mathematical formula for the surface of a spherical soap bubble ( |r| = constant); moreover, there is a mathematical theory explaining how it comes about (the calculus of variations). Whoever thought up the soap bubble example was probably unfamiliar with the math. OK, fine, so recast the statement so it says, "X" (Jung?) said: "Soap bubble yadda yadda yadda." Don't need to go into the math in this article (though might want to cross-link for the curious), but try not to make false statements.

the dog

sorry, maybe it's the size, but it took me a lot of time and effort just see there was a dog in the picture. try showing it around the size it is, on the monitor screen or showing bigger illustrations. that's because now that i know there is a dog there, i can find it, but until i read it, i couldn't tell what was in the picture. capi 00:44, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured article

It's not there yet, but I think this one has featured article potential.

Prägnanz? - is there a missing law

I seem to remember that there were 7 laws, not 6. Wasn't there a 'Law of simplicity', whereby two overlapping silhouettes are still perceived as two shapes, rather than the single complex shape they make up? It's been a long time since I studied it, so I could be wrong. --HappyDog 14:26, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Helpful tip

If you can't see the dog in the emergence test, pierce a small hole in a piece of paper and look through that. The paper masks everything from your peripheral vision so that your brain concentrates on the information in the picture. You'll then probably see the dog instantly. After that, you'll never be able to interpret the picture any other way. BrownBean 12:19, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

2/6/2006 Law of Simplicity is a combination of various laws, so it is not missing unless you want to go into detail. -a.

Gestalt Discredited?

Since the article mentions that "Gestalt theories of visual perception, especially the Law of Pragnanz have been largely discredited by progess in computational neuroscience" I am missing some reference further on as to what it is that is discredited exactly and why.

I remember reading, I think in Cognitive Psychology by Eysenck and Keane, that although they haven't been explained in terms of their underlying neurological mechanisms, the Gestalt laws have not been disproven and are still considered valid for description and prediction of behaviour. Forlornturtle 10:35, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Like Freud's theories, Gestaltisms are so vague and non-predictive that they are impossible to disprove, which is why they persist. Meanwhile, neuroscience is progressing quite nicely, thank you, without any reference to them... As it says in the article, they are descriptors of what happens in vision. Not explanations, or disprovable theories. Bin them and move on. Famousdog 14:33, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

They are certainly predictive enough to be useful to designers. For example, pretty much any visual technique that works well in computer interfaces (boxes, lines, lists, tables, buttons, tabs) can be explained in terms of these laws, and they can be used to make analytical evaluations to help with design decisions. As long as a model makes reasonable predictions, it can be useful without being explanatory. But I guess this is a never-ending battle between psychologists and neuroscientists.

Anyway, I agree a reference is needed to back this statement up. I'll put in a "fact" template. Forlornturtle 16:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we'd be better off rephrasing this statement to something like, "In some scholarly communities (eg. computational neuroscience) Gestalt principles have been disregarded. In others (eg. perceptual psychology, display design), on the other hand, Gestalt principles continued to be used and discussed today." I think that would more be more accurate statement (to prove my point, do a google scholar search for "gestalt vision" and you'll find quite a bit of recent stuff). Gosolowe 17:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Quoting Famousdog -- "Gestaltisms are so vague and non-predictive that they are impossible to disprove... As it says in the article, they are descriptors of what happens in vision. Not explanations, or disprovable theories. Bin them and move on."

Surely this misses the whole point? The gestaltisms are examples of why an atomistic theory of the mind is not an adequate one, and a gestalt one is -- this doesn't stand in opposition to neuroscience, as neuroscience may well turn out to BE the gestalt explanation. In fact, it seems to be going this way: the old idea that mind functions can be attributed to specific brain sections has been largely disproven, as we now know that various brain sections are involved in any one operation, and are thus responsible for numerous functions: in short, neuroscience appears to favour a gestalt interpretation over an atomistic one. Gestalt is the adequate description of neuroscientific explanations -- the two are reciprocal. However, I didn't feel at liberty to remove the line being debated myself as I've never posted here before. - Anon

Firstly, how do Gestaltisms show that an atomistic theory of the mind is not an adequate one? In my experience, the atomistic theory of mind (if by "atomistic" you mean psychological processes being reductible to the level of neurons and chemical processes) is progressing along quite nicely (without reference to Gestaltisms), thank you. Secondly, if neuroscience turns out to BE gestalt - what's the point of gestalt? Frankly, i think its only point is to allow people to sound clever and pontificate about vision/psychology without knowing the mechanics. As for the clash between the modular view of mind and the systems approach - we have learnt all this through computational and cognitive neuroscience, not gestalt. Gestalt theory never told us anything interesting, predictive or useful. Just a lot of generalisations. You say "Gestalt is the adequate description of neuroscientific explanations." Surely, neuroscientific explanations are an adequate description of themselves - why do we need gestalt? (as an addendum, i've changed the wording of the offensive sentence as gestalt has not really been discredited just rendered redundant) Famousdog 22:27, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Regardless of the validity of the Gestalt principles, they are in fact widely used in some psychological research on attention. In order to reflect this (and remain neutral), I've changed the last sentence of the opening paragraph and added a section about their Applications to Modern Perceptual Psychology.Gosolowe 13:08, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm happy with your re-wording. Its very diplomatic! Famousdog 13:48, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Stuff...

I'm just curious how anyone would relate Gestalt Psychology to ministry.

Shouldn't one spell Pragnanz correctly Prägnanz? It is still a German word and has not really become an English word. Any objections?

Please fix this page. I've tried fixing it but I don't have time to fine tune my mistakes. -Bhargav_mr 167.206.174.75 13:44, 1 February 2006 (UTC) Thanks -Bhargav_mr

Supporting citation does not support

The following statement is made in the introduction:

"Gestalt theories of perception are often criticized for being descriptive rather than explanatory in nature. In some scholarly communities (eg. computational neuroscience), thus, Gestalt principles are viewed as redundant or uninformative".

The current location of the supporting citation is this web page: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~smgxscd/ContourResearch.html.

This web page appears to be related to computational models useful for contour mapping tasks. It makes no argument that Gestalt principles are either redundant or uninformative. Previous versions had a different sentence and perhaps the purpose of the link was once an example of what computaional neuroscience is concerned with. If so, perhaps the link belongs in the Computational Neuroscience article. On the other hand, maybe a web page supporting the statement exists on the web site, but the link references the wrong one. -Mak 19:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Reference to "Reification (fallacy)"

I am curious why under the Reification header - which is about how the mind 'completes' pictures - there is a "see also" link to Reification (fallacy) - which is about treating an abstract as a physical entity. I see that they are somewhat related, but I don't see why people reading this article would be so interested in the other one that it warrants a link. Can anyone clarify, or should we take the link out? Frostlion 21:25, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Emergence demonstration example

The article uses the image of a dog to demonstrate the idea of emergence, however this isn't demonstrating emergence but rather the lack of it. The paragraph in the article explicitly states that the dog is not made up of the individual parts of a dog, but that it is seen as a whole immediately, thus going against emergence. Should it be reworded to reflect this? — metaprimer (talk) 16:05, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

POV tag in Criticism section

The earlier discussion on Gestalt being discredited did not have an adequate defense of gestalt psychology. The criticism section of this article thus has a POV problem. The view that gestalt principles are defunct and should be replaced with computational neuroscience is a POV.

Point 1: Gestalt principles are experimentally disprovable.

Consider the circle in the "Law of Closure" example in the Pragnanz section of this very Wikipedia article. If the principle of closure were false, then people would not say they saw a circle. They would say they saw a group of lines. They would have to guess if you asked them to say whether it was a circle, a triangle, or a square. So, if there were no principle of closure, then, when given a forced choice between circle, triangle, and square, one would expect subjects to say circle only 33% of the time because they are simply guessing between three alternatives. The theoretical hypothesis is that subjects will say circle when shown the lines significantly more than 33% of the time. The null hypothesis is that subjects will say circle only 33% of the time or less. These are experimentally testable hypotheses.

If you want a more sophisticated example, here's an actual study:

"Figure-ground organization refers to the visual perception that a contour separating two regions belongs to one of the regions. Recent studies have found neural correlates of figure-ground assignment in V2 as early as 10-25 ms after response onset, providing strong support for the role of local bottom-up processing. How much information about figure-ground assignment is available from locally computed cues? Using a large collection of natural images, in which neighboring regions were assigned a figure-ground relation by human observers, we quantified the extent to which figural regions locally tend to be smaller, more convex, and lie below ground regions. Our results suggest that these Gestalt cues are ecologically valid, and we quantify their relative power. We have also developed a simple bottom-up computational model of figure-ground assignment that takes image contours as input. Using parameters fit to natural image statistics, the model is capable of matching human-level performance when scene context limited." (Fowlkes, Martin, & Malik, 2007, p. 2)

The claim that gestalt principles are not empirically disprovable is a POV.

Point 2:Gestalt principles continue to be used in psychological research. Here are four examples:

"Gestalt properties, such as proximity and good continuation, play a prominent role in human object recognition. Good continuation is a fundamental, low-level property of the visual system; it allows the observer to perceive smooth contour despite gaps or partial occlusion, permitting recognition of partially obscured objects. In the case of a gap, it allows edge relationships to become salient. This does not necessarily lead to visual completion, but it is a prerequisite of the process. The human visual system is able to rapidly and automatically complete missing visual information, and it has been suggested that the observer actually perceives the complete image despite partial occlusion (Kanizsa, 1979). Although the gestalt principle of good continuation clearly contributes to human and primate vision (see Fujita, 2001, 2006; Grossberg & Mingolla, 1985; Sekuler & Palmer, 1992; Yin, Kellman, & Shipley, 1997), the evidence relating to the operation of this principle in pigeon visual perception is unconvincing." (Kirkpatrick, Wilkinson, and Johnston, 2007, p. 273)

"To acquire a mature view of the visual environment, a person must organize individual parts into coherent wholes. Because there are an indefinite number of ways to organize the surfaces and edge fragments of visual displays, the question of how infants and children achieve perceptual organization has been a source of theoretical debate and empirical inquiry throughout the last century of scientific psychology. Some theorists have suggested that perceptual organization is developmentally late and crucially dependent on an extended period of learning visual and motor associations (Hebb, 1949; Piaget, 1952). Alternatively, Gestalt psychologists have long claimed that perceptual grouping reflects the activity of a nervous system that is naturally constrained to follow certain principles that impose organization from the very first encounter with a visual pattern (e.g., Kohler, 1929)."

"Perceptual grouping is the process by which elements in the visual image are aggregated into larger and more complex structures, i.e., "objects." This paper reports a study of the spatial factors and time-course of the development of objects over the course of the first few hundred milliseconds of visual processing. The methodology uses the now well-established idea of an "object benefit" for certain kinds of tasks (here, faster within-object than between-objects probe comparisons) to test what the visual system in fact treats as an object at each point during processing. The study tested line segment pairs in a wide variety of spatial configurations at a range of exposure times, in each case measuring the strength of perceptual grouping as reflected in the magnitude of the object benefit. Factors tested included nonaccidental properties such as collinearity, cotermination, and parallelism; contour relatability; Gestalt factors such as symmetry and skew symmetry, and several others, all tested at fine (25 msec) time-slices over the course of processing. The data provide detailed information about the comparative strength of these factors in inducing grouping at each point in processing. The result is a vivid picture of the chronology of object formation, as objects progressively coalesce, with fully bound visual objects completed by about 200 msec of processing." (Feldman, 2007, p. 816)

"This study examined gestalt perception in high-functioning autism (HFA) and its relation to tasks indicative of local visual processing. Data on of gestalt perception, visual illusions (VI), hierarchical letters (HL), Block Design (BD) and the Embedded Figures Test (EFT) were collected in adult males with HFA, schizophrenia, depression and normative controls. Individuals with HFA processed gestalt stimuli less in accord with gestalt laws, particularly regarding the principle of similarity. Gestalt processing correlated positively with global processing of the HL. EFT and BD performance correlated negatively with VI susceptibility in HFA. All clinical groups succumbed less to VI than the normative sample. Results suggest decreased gestalt perception in HFA, being associated with a more general local visual processing bias." (Bolte, Holtmann, Poustka, Scheurich, & Schmidt, 2007, p. 1493)

The claim that gestalt principles are no longer useful and should be thrown into the dustbins of history is a POV.

Point 4: The dichotomy between gestalt principles and neuroscience is false. Here are two examples of gestalt principles in neuroscientific studies. The first includes gestalt principles in a computational model:

"Before we can recognize a visual object, our visual system has to segregate it from its background. This requires a fast mechanism for establishing the presence and location of objects independently of their identity. Recently, border-ownership neurons were recorded in monkey visual cortex which might be involved in this task [Zhou, H., Friedmann, H., von der Heydt, R., 2000. Coding of border ownership in monkey visual cortex. J. Neurosci. 20 (17), 6594-6611]. In order to explain the basic mechanisms required for fast coding of object presence, we have developed a neural network model of visual cortex consisting of three stages. Feed-forward and lateral connections support coding of Gestalt properties, including similarity, good continuation, and convexity. Neurons of the highest area respond to the presence of an object and encode its position, invariant of its form. Feedback connections to the lowest area facilitate orientation detectors activated by contours belonging to potential objects, and thus generate the experimentally observed border-ownership property. This feedback control acts fast and significantly improves the figure-ground segregation required for the consecutive task of object recognition." (Zwickel, Wachtler, & Eckhorn, 2007, p. 216)

The second study uses gestalt principles to investigate the theoretical concept of intuition from a neuroscientific approach:

"According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is "the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning." Most people would agree that intuitive responses appear as ideas or feelings that subsequently guide our thoughts and behaviors. It is proposed that people continuously, without conscious attention, recognize patterns in the stream of sensations that impinge upon them. What exactly is being recognized is not clear yet, but we assume that people detect potential content based on only a few aspects of the input (i.e., the gist). The result is a vague perception of coherence which is not explicitly describable but instead embodied in a "gut feeling" or an initial guess, which subsequently biases thought and inquiry. To approach the nature of intuitive processes, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging when participants were working at a modified version of the Waterloo Gestalt Closure Task. Starting from our conceptualization that intuition involves an informed judgment in the context of discovery, we expected activation within the median orbito-frontal cortex (OFC), as this area receives input from all sensory modalities and has been shown to be crucially involved in emotionally driven decisions. Results from a direct contrast between intuitive and nonintuitive judgments, as well as from a parametric analysis, revealed the median OFC, the lateral portion of the amygdala, anterior insula, and ventral occipito-temporal regions to be activated. Based on these findings, we suggest our definition of intuition to be promising and a good starting point for future research on intuitive processes." (Volz & von Cramon, 2006, p. 2077).

The claim that gestalt principles should be replaced by computational neurscience is a POV.

Point 5: If gestalt principles turn out to be the result of neural computations, then we still need a good section on gestalt principles. The gestalt researchers deserve credit for discovering the principles first. An encyclopedia (such as Wikipedia) should be careful to credit discoveries appropriately.

Point 6: Here is an alternative point of view about gestalt psychology published by experts in a respected academic journal:

"Psychology is prone to intellectual fads. The field can be criticized for embracing novel ideas and discarding prior ones without necessarily resolving the issues that gave rise to the earlier thinking. This charge, of course, is not unique to psychology; it applies to many of the sciences. The almost wholesale replacement of relativity theory by quantum mechanics in physics in the 20th century is one such example. The linear scala naturae reasoning of Spencer that largely supplanted the richer Darwinian evolutionary thinking is another. Yet, in recent years it has occasionally been recognized that the potential relevance of a body of theory or data does not disappear with its loss of popularity. Modern physics is reuniting relativity and the standard model under the banner of superstring theory, and the theory of punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary biology has made sense of a number of the more obscure factors in the Spencerian model." "A retrospective view of experimental psychology might yield similar insights. The rich tradition of research in the Gestalt mode is ignored in much modern work. Overshadowed by the long popularity of behaviorism and scattered by the chaos preceding the Second World War, Gestalt theory has had only a modest influence on modern thinking in such areas as cognitive psychology, beyond a few historical acknowledgments. Yet, in a wide variety of fields, it could be claimed that the Gestaltists "got there first." The focus on mental activity, the idea of isomorphic relationships between brain events and experience, and the inclusion of organismic and contextual factors in the study of psychological variables all were part of the Gestalt tradition. As psychology adopts ever more literal machine (computer) metaphors of mind and brain (metaphors typically of such complexity that a larger view is seldom taken or sought), it might be productive to examine again the Gestalt tradition, a tradition of experimental psychology focused on context and organism rather than on disembodied modular components of hypothetical mental and physical structures." (Sharps, & Wertheimer, 2000, p. 315)

The POV policy of Wikipedia entitles this view to expression in the article.

Summary: The view that gestalt principles are defunct and should be replaced with computational neuroscience is a POV. A more balanced criticism of gestalt might read something like this:

Gestalt no longer enjoys the popularity it once had in psychology. The principles of gestalt psychology are descriptive in nature rather than explanatory. This has limited the ability of gestalt psychology to drive new research. In addition, alternative theories of perception have arisen that make no reference to gestalt principles, with computational neuroscientific models offering an example. Computational neuroscience models of perception are not based on gestalt principles.

Yet, the principles of gestalt psychology remain valid descriptions and continue to be used in current research. Researchers have demonstrated gestalt principles in animal perception, have discovered patterns in the development of gestalt principles, and have used gestalt principles to investigate perception in psychological disorders. Neuroscience has also started to deal with gestalt principles. Additionally, gestalt principles have found practical application in the engineering of software interfaces for computer systems.

Thus, while gestalt principles are no longer a major focus of psychological research and have limited value as a general theoretical approach to perception, they continue to contribute to our undertanding of perception and remain a phenomenon to be explained by more modern theories of perception.

references

• Bolte, S., Holtmann, M., Poustka, F., Scheurich, A., & Schmidt L (2007). Gestalt perception and local-global processing in high-functioning autism. Journal Of Autism And Developmental Disorders, 37, 1493-1504.
• Feldman, J. (2007). Formation of visual "objects" in the early computation of spatial relations. Perception & Psychophysics, 69, 816-27.
• Fowlkes, C.C., Martin, D.R., & Malik, J. (2007). Local figure-ground cues are valid for natural images. Journal Of Vision, 7, 2.
• Fujita, K. (2001). Perceptual completion in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) and pigeons (Columba livia). Perception & Psychophysics, 63, 115–125.
• Fujita, K. (2006). Seeing what is not there: Illusion, completion, and spatiotemporal boundary formation in comparative perspective. In E. A. Wasserman & T. R. Zentall (Eds.), Comparative cognition: Experimental explorations of animal intelligence (pp. 29–52). New York: Oxford University Press.
• Fujita, K., & Giersch, A. (2005). What perceptual rules do capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) follow in completing partly occluded figures? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 31, 387–398.
• Grossberg, S., & Mingolla, E. (1985). Neural dynamics of form perception: Boundary completion, illusory figures, and neon color spreading. Psychological Review, 92, 173–211.
• Hebb, D. O. (1949). The organization of behavior. New York: Wiley.
• Kanizsa, G. (1979). Organization in vision: Essays on Gestalt perception. New York: Praeger.
• Kohler, W. (1929). Gestalt psychology. New York: Horace Liveright.
• Kirkpatrick, K., Wilkinson, A., & Johnston, S. (2007). Pigeons discriminate continuous versus discontinuous line segments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 33, 273-286.
• Piaget, J. (1952). The origins of intelligence in children. New York: Norton.
• Quinn, P.C., & Bhatt, R.S. (2006). Are Some Gestalt Principles Deployed More Readily Than Others During Early Development? The Case of Lightness Versus Form Similarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 1221-1230.
• Sekuler, A. B., & Palmer, S. E. (1992). Perception of partly occluded objects: A microgenetic analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 121, 95–111.
• Sharps, M.J., Wertheimer, M. (2000). Review of General Psychology, 4, 315-336.
• Volz, K.G., & von Cramon, D.Y. (2006). What neuroscience can tell about intuitive processes in the context of perceptual discovery. Journal Of Cognitive Neuroscience,18, 2077-2087.
• Yin, C., Kellman, P. J., & Shipley, T. F. (1997). Surface completion complements boundary formation in the visual integration of partly occluded objects. Perception, 26, 95–111.
• Zwickel, T., Wachtler, T., & Eckhorn, R. (2007). Coding the presence of visual objects in a recurrent neural network of visual cortex. Bio Systems, 89, 216-26.