Week 5 - Gestalt Effect and Schema Theories

 Gestalt Theory is an attempt of understands about on how our mind viewing something or parts as organised and structured it as a whole. In other words, it is the explanation on how human perceives of groups or parts of objects and form it as ‘whole’ objects. 


 There are 5 principles of gestalt. I choose 3 laws out of five, which are Law of Proximity, Law of Similarity and Law of Closure.


1.  Law of Proximity

It is stated that the objects or shapes that are close to one another emerge to form groups. The more likely people are to mentally group them together when the objects are closer to one another. Even though if it thoroughly different on the shapes, sizes, or the objects.

Take example from the above figure. For me, the simple name that I can give for the picture since we all know that our brain is lazy to work or think in depth, then it is a fruit bowl where all the fruit are as one whole item. However, if the fruit were placed separately individually, therefore we would see them as individual fruits such as apple, kiwi, strawberry and grape.


2. Law of Similarity

When we perceived the object or anything, the simplest thing our brain do is tend to group the similar shaped together. We concentrate what are matching first either in colour, shape or forms.

The figure above is group together due to similar in the colour, which are white and black. However, when we look very deeply, the animal group in the figure is not the same; one on the right side is a cat rather than a rabbit. This is because our brains which are lazy only quickly identify the patterns faster rather than identify the separate parts of the object. We like to see at how the pattern runs as one. 

1.    3. Law of closure

Closure happens when an object is incomplete or a space is not completely enclosed. Or in simple words, the Principle of Closure involved when we tend to see complete figures although the part of the information is missing. Therefore, our mind perceives the visual elements to complete the missing space.

Example from the above figure applies with the closure law. First, my sights only see a man play with his saxophone. But, in other way, the picture also could manipulate us. Therefore, with the law of closure, my mind tried to complete another missing space on the figure. There was a women face on the right side.

Therefore, as a conclusion, gestalt psychological theory are used everywhere, we just have to open our eyes to see and identify them.

References:

• Woo, C. W. H. (2010). Analyzing Visual Communication. Brunei Darussalam: Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
• Kohler, W. (1947). Gestalt Psychology. New York: Liveright
• Sternberg, R., J. (1996). Cognitive Psychology. 2nd. Ed. Harcourt Brace College        Publishers