Gestalt Principles of Perception

hey guys welcome to mr. Culver's psychology class today we are going to be focusing on the interaction of the person and the environment in determining perception not what you see what you perceive and today we're going to be doing that through guest all two principles of perception now guest shell principles of perception according to a textbook are principles that describe the brain's organization of sensory information into meaningful units and patterns not as a textbook definition I would define it as you have this entire world of so much going on so many little bits and pieces but we are gonna organize this into units and patterns that will make sense so when we have this overload of things that we see we can perceive into something that makes sense for us um yeah it's just making perceptional sense of the chaotic world it's seeing the whole different than how we see the parts and in order to do this there are five principles gesh salt principles that you need to know first one is continuity second would be proximity third will be similarity fourth closure and fifth figure-ground relationship so first off we have continuity I like to use this image right here on the right in order to understand continuity when you look at it it looks like there's a straight line going through here and then another straight line going up and down and up and down but what's the stop us from saying that this is a half circle above and a half circle below and a half circle above how come we know that it keeps going right here and doesn't just stop and start something new because of the gestalt principle continuity we perceive it as going straight through or going straight through the other lines and we see two distinct lines when we look through this image this is something that can help us a lot if we're in wilderness survival mode we see the snake right here we know that it's one thing that kind of just curls up and around the branch goes up like that and around it helps us because we can see the snake and know what it is where it is and what it's doing instead of just a bunch of little random lines second off we have proximity proximity helps us group things and it long images based on where they are located so right here in a we can see six distinct groups one for each of these dots or maybe even just one big group of dots right here an image B they split off in big pairs because they're closer to each other we want to see three groups instead of six groups even though they are six distinct things like this because they are separated into their own little pairs it makes us see three groups instead C is interesting because even though they're different size because where they're located we want to put them together according to what then nearby and so we see four groups even if they are different sizes this image right here over on the right helps us understand proximity a little bit more in reality we're just looking at a bunch of little triangles but when we piece them all together we see the Statue of Liberty but when you look at any little individual piece maybe put your hand over the screen to cover it up we just see a little triangle a little triangle a little triangle it's nothing interesting until we use all of the parts to make a different hole so it's kind of like proximity but similarity uses some distinguishing features of our shapes or of our image in order for us put them into groups and so when we look at this one on the right they're all just a bunch of little circles but using the color is something that distinguishes them so they have that similar feature of color which help us put them into little different groups like this pink line will be its own group this yellow box is its own group as with the blue and the green and the orange we are going to see them according to what similar feature they had we're going to see them into little groups it's what helps us see the little shape right here we can see if we can see us or there's no real square there but because we group them into little different shape according to their yellow feature then we actually see a square over here we can see different shapes and different lines according to what is similar about them this one it's colored this one uses shape they're squares and they're circles and so we see different lines kind of striping down through this on this one we see like a tee in four different little boxes because of what similar features are their closure this one's a little more interesting this one there is no actual line going through the different shapes but you can kind of perceive a light because our brain uses a loader to draw little lines where we feel like there should be something there so for our example on this Panda there's no line right here these are just like random little black dots sticking out of it but we can kind of make a light with our mind to enclose it to create closure in this picture so it helps us figure out the whole shape despite their only be little parts you can see that when we go into this next picture right here this is where the closure is occurring on these different lines now this one is the figure-ground distinction it's really interesting if you look at this picture here what do you see well you could see a lady or you can see a man playing the saxophone now the interesting with thing with figure-ground distinction is depending on what you make as the main object of the image and what you see as the background of an image can change your entire perception of it so figure is the object that is there at large and we can see that really well with this example if you look and you see a vase that will be the object at large that will be the figure of the image the ground helps us because we know the word background it's the backdrop of the image it's what's not the focal point it's what's there back so on this image right here the face will be the figure and the blackness will be the ground but because we like to look at optical illusions in order to help us understand things more national principles you can also switch it around what do you see if you make black the figure and white the ground if black is a figure and why is the background then you will see a couple faces looking at each other it's no longer a vase it's two faces that are looking at each other and so it's going to be able to shift back and forth between the figure and the grounds being black or being white and this one is also a very good example of it whether the white is the ground and the black is a figure where you see a bunch of swans flying in the air or the black is the ground and - the white is the figure then you'll see fishes swimming in black ocean I think this is a really good example of it right here um you see FedEx and you've got the white as the ground and the FedEx Express is the figure but if you look closely you can switch the ground in the figure so the white is a ground have you ever noticed anything special with this FedEx Express if you switch the ground in the figure well if you do that then this arrow actually appears if the white is now your figure and the orange is your ground then there's this arrow sticking area here as highlighted in green so we can review every principal we've looked at so far in closure and this word Gestalt if you can even read guess shulte then you know that - tall principles are being applied in your brain set just to make this image for you right here in the G we have closure even though there's this big gap right here we're filling it in at different parts because of it right here we have proximity we're also using some similarity proximity helps us make this box this box this box this box all the boxes form together into one letter similarities being used because we can distinguish the black lines from the gray lines in these boxes continuity even though there's this bar going through the S we know that the S will continue behind the bar and so we know that continuity is being used similarity we can see these T's as being the same and so even though we know we can kind of figure out this one using different principles like closure and proximity to figure it out gave it after we look at this T we can look at this one it instantly recognize it because it's similar to this T if you look at different of optical illusions you can identify the little bits and pieces of these sketched out principles I want you to see how many you can find when you look at this image all right thank you for watching

Channel: Jason Colver

Views: 104,303

Rating: 4.8955226 out of 5

Keywords: Gestalt, Principles of Perception, Psychology, education, optical illusion

Id: RWJSC1HU32c

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2016