Perceptual Organizations Several Theories Constructionist View The brain

Perceptual Organizations Several Theories

Constructionist View • The brain constructs a perception out of a great many individual sensations. • For example: When you meet someone, you look at their face and your brain takes in sensations from each part of their face creating how you see the face.

The Gestalt Psychologists • Max Wertheimer • Germen Psychologist • Formed a group of psychologists that believed that the whole is more important the sum of the parts and that each part affects every other. • The brain immediately perceives a stimulus as a whole, rather than focusing on the individual sensations.

More on the Gestalt School • Focused on interactions of the parts observing how the brain uses certain perceptual cues to make sense of the things. • Developed laws of perception. • There are four Gestalt Laws of perception.

Law of Closure We tend to fill in missing details to complete a figure so that it has a consistent overall Form.

Law of Proximity We tend to group together things that are close to one another.

Law of Similarity We group together things that have some visual element in common, such as size, shape and color.

Law of Continuation We tend to see interrupted lines as continuous lines with something hiding part of them.

Are you a top down or bottom up thinker? Do you concentrate on details of a situation and make up your mind or do you include prior knowledge and look at the big picture? Details: Bottom up Big Picture: Top Down

“Can’t see the forest for the trees” Bottom up processing: Pattern recognition that begins with an analysis of small units or features and eventually results in perception. Top Down Processing: Involves a person’s knowledge of the world. Begins with an analysis of higher-level information that you already may have about the stimulus.