34. Summarize the Gestalt principles of perception.
In the early 20th century Germany psychologists realized a pattern of people would organize sensations into a Gestalt, which in German translates to a “form” or a “whole”. The Gestalt psychologists have shown over many years the ways we use to organize our sensations into perceptions. The real truth to all of them is a fundamental: Our brain does more than register information about the world, according to page 243 of the textbook.
The first principle is figure and ground. This principle state that more than one perception can be sensed by the same sensation. This is when the relationship of the two is constantly invert each between each other. Although each time the stimulus is organized we put the figure as being seen before and against a ground. \
After being able to identify the differences between figure and ground, the figure must also be grouped into a meaningful form. There are three different groupings: proximity, continuity, and closure. On page 243 the different groupings are described as follows. Proximity is the grouping of nearby figures together. Continuity we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones. When we use closure we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object.