PSYCH 1XX3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Principles Of Grouping, Emergence, Railways Act 1921
Document Summary
Distinguishing figure from background is a complex visual function. Need to figure out parts that are: background, object of interest. 1920s and 30s, german psychologists studied how people perceive world around them. Believed the whole is is different from the sum of its parts . Believed people tended to perceive whole stimulus rather the putting together collection of stimulus" discrete parts. Movement = reaction to structuralist approach: said 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. How we group visual input in certain ways. Either born with laws (gestalt principles) or acquire them very rapidly. Figure ground: ability to distinguish an object form its background in a visual scene. Seeing a vase of flowers against a wallpaper is an example of figure-ground.