Week 5: Gestalt Effect and Schema Theories: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Question 2: Name three laws of Gestalt Theory and provide examples to illustrate your point.

Gestalt psychology is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic (meaning that “the whole is different from the sum of its parts”, that a system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone.

The principle maintains that the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts. Gestalt theory allows for the breakup of elements from the whole situation into what it really is.

Gestalt theory applies to all aspects of human learning, although it applies most directly to perception and problem-solving.

The 3 laws of Gestalt theory that I have chosen to talk about are the law of proximity, law of common fate and law of closure.

Firstly the law of proximity states that when an individual perceives an assortment of objects that are close to each other as forming a group in comparison to objects that are spaced farther apart. The purpose of this law is to create eye fixation.

For example when you go into a supermarket to buy some fruits, then you see there is a mix jumble of fruits all in one section and next to it a section where all the fruits are organise and separated in groups, Apples with apples, watermelons with watermelons. Between these two sections, which do you think you will pick? Of course with immediate reaction we will tend to choose the sections which are organized neatly! WHY? It is because our brain is lazy, so we tend to choose the easier way out rather than to have our brain work to think complicate at any given moment.

Continuing, the law of common fate states that when objects move in the same direction, we tend to see them as a group. “A viewer mentally groups five arrows or five raised hands pointing to the sky because they all point in the same direction. An arrow or a hand pointed in opposite direction will create tension because the viewer will not see it as part of the upwardly directed whole” (Lester, 2006). The purpose of this law is to create direction and reduce tension when we view something.

For this one, it fulfills the law of common fate since we perceived the wordings, “look at me, follow me, read me!” as a unit while they are moving in the same direction.  We read out the sentence easily with no doubt.  The wordings of the sentence are stay still in the same direction while the remaining are tilted into different angle which the viewers will not spot out any meaning of it.

Last but not least, law of closure states things, objects or shapes tend to be grouped together and seen as a whole, when it is incomplete humans will look for recognizable patterns and visually close gaps in forms which we use from our past experience, understanding to fill in the gaps. Therefore Contradiction and missing phenomena in the group tend to be “corrected” by the mind to achieve coherence. The purpose of this law is to manipulate perception and to create subtle effects.

For example, the sentences below, Eventhough there is missing or jumble up reversed letters you will still be able to read it because our mind will tend to correct the words.

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

References:

Chris, W.H.W. (2010). Analyzing Visual Communication. BA in Professional Communication Reader. Published by University Brunei Darussalam.

Lester, P. M. (2006). Syntactic theory of Visual Communication. Retrieved on 19 September 2012 from http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/viscomtheory.html