PSYCH 9A Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Cadency, Inferior Temporal Gyrus, Gestalt Psychology
Document Summary
The visual system contains cells that serve as feature detectors - cell that may fire when a particular angle, line, or movement is in view. The perception of form depends both on feature input and how we organize and interpret the form: We choose which features matter for our recognition and which features are incidental. E. g. we recognize a man"s shirt by paying attention to its outline, not the edges of the shadows. The organization is not specified by the figure itself but is instead up to the perceiver. Gestalt psychology - a theoretical approach that emphasizes the role of organized wholes in perception and other psychological processes. E. g. to view a picture, your perception must somehow group the elements of the scene appropriately. Local information (contained in one small part of the scene) helps guide our parsing. Similarity - things similar to one another (by color and orientation) get grouped together.
