Gestalt laws or Gestalt laws are rules that explain the origin of perceptions of stimuli. Thanks to them, we can understand why we perceive things the way we do them. The laws of the Gestalt revolve around the idea that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
These laws were established by the research psychologists of the German Gestalt School Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka, who have shown in the laboratory that the human brain organizes perceived elements in the form of configurations or wholes (gestalts).
- Thus.
- This idea has replaced the thought that sensations are the result of the simple sum of individual perceptions.
- As we said.
- The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
The fact that most of us interpret the forms in terms of significant units illustrates one of the main processes of perception in action: we try to simplify the complex stimuli presented to us by the environment.
If we did not reduce the complex to something understandable, the world would be an excessive challenge to think and live properly. Ironically, psychologists have found that the process of simplifying the world requires considerable and meaningful effort.
Let’s see the following images
Most people would say they see an incomplete triangle.
In the figure above, we usually see four tubes.
In this figure, we would see a square or a diamond in two columns
Are these the only interpretations that can be obtained? One person, rightly, could you say that there are three angles in the first figure, eight vertical lines in the second and one?W? Over one? Mr?In the third.
The gestural conception of perception draws attention to how we interpret the individual elements of a scene as a complete and unified whole. This vision is based on the assumption that the organized whole is somewhat different and, in fact, greater than the sum of its individual elements. Elements.
Basic perceptual processes work according to a number of principles. These principles describe how we organize fragments and pieces of information into units that make sense.
These processes, called Gestalt organizing laws, were implemented in the early twentieth century by a group of German psychologists who devoted themselves to the study of models and were able to discover valid principles of importance for visual and auditory stimuli. you’ll see what the laws of the Gestalt organization are.
Under this law, we generally form groups in terms of closed or full numbers, rather than open numbers; therefore, we tend to ignore discontinuities and focus on the overall way.
We tend to group the elements closest to each other, so the tendency to see letters instead of dots in the image below is greater:
We group elements of similar appearance. That’s why we see rows of identical apples instead of columns of different figures in this image.
In general, the predominant gothic principle is simplicity. When we look at a model, we perceive it in the most fundamental and direct way possible.
In the following image, we tend to see the hands as a letter Y. This happens according to the principle of simplicity, in which the brain looks at what is easier to understand.
Since the hands are surrounded by other letters, we think they are one more that together form the word TYME, although the law of proximity may also be present, because the hands are close to other letters, or the principle of similarity. . Since there is no differentiation of colors or curved lines, we think it is just one more letter.
As we see, these Gestalt organizing laws are of paramount importance in understanding our perception, we organize the stimuli to make sense of them, taking into account different principles or laws, the explanation is based on the fact that the brain needs to simplify what it perceives to make the interpretation more accessible.