Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
2,597
result(s) for
"Gestalt"
Sort by:
Prägnanz in visual perception
How do we perceptually and cognitively organize incoming stimulation? A century ago, Gestalt psychologists posited the law of Prägnanz: psychological organization will always be as ‘good’ as possible given the prevailing conditions. To make the Prägnanz law a useful statement, it needs to be specified further (a) what a
‘good’
psychological organization entails, (b)
how
the Prägnanz tendency can be realized, and (c)
which conditions
need to be taken into account. Although the Gestalt school did provide answers to these questions, modern-day mentions of
Prägnanz
or good Gestalt often lack these clarifications. The concept of
Prägnanz
has been (mis)understood in many different ways, and by looking back on the rich history of the concept, we will attempt to present a more fine-grained view and promote a renewed understanding of the central role of Prägnanz in visual perception and beyond. We review Gestalt psychology’s answers to the questions listed above, and also discuss the four main uses of the Prägnanz concept in more detail: (a) a Prägnanz tendency in each organizational process, (b) Prägnanz as a property of a Gestalt, (c) Prägnanz steps as internal reference points, and (d) Prägnanz in relation to aesthetic appreciation. As a key takeaway, Prägnanz is a multifaceted Gestalt psychological concept indicating the “goodness” of an experienced organization. Both the removal of unnecessary details and the emphasis on characteristic features of the overall organization compared to a reference organization can contribute to the emergence of a ‘better’ Gestalt. The stimulus constellation is not the only factor in determining the goodness of an organization, also the stimulus’ interaction with an individual in a specific spatial and temporal context plays a role. Taking the ideas on Prägnanz as a generative framework and keeping the original Gestalt psychological context in mind, future research on perceptual organization can improve our understanding of the principles underlying psychological organization by further specifying how different organizational principles interact in concrete situations.
Public significance statement:
This paper reviews what a ‘good’ psychological organization entails, and how the incoming stimulation is clarified in human perception to achieve the best possible psychological organization. The review debunks common misconceptions on the meaning of “goodness” and synthesizes the most important perspectives and developments on “goodness” from its conception until now.
Journal Article
Wertheimer on Gestalt laws of Seeing and of Mental Health1
Around 100 years ago, Max Wertheimer’s famous work “Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt II” was published, in which he first presented what has since been widely referred to as the “Gestalt laws” (albeit not always appropriately). What is less well known is that Wertheimer at the same time dictated the fundamental theses on the development and healing of mental disorders to the German psychiatrist Heinrich Schulte for an article that can be regarded as the cornerstone for Gestalt psychological psychopathology. A comparison of the two studies shows that Wertheimer pursued the same far-reaching project in both works, namely, to decipher the “inner structural laws” of Gestalten – in the first work for the area of simple instances of seeing, in the other for the area of community in human life and its role in mental health. This shows that Wertheimer’s project of exploring the “structural laws of Gestalt” had more and something different as its goal than the often-simplified understanding of the “Gestalt laws” in textbooks and on the Internet would suggest.
Journal Article
Gestalt Theory and Sexuality
The understanding of sexuality (and sex therapy) depends very much on whether a more narrowly somatic or more broadly phenomenal perspective is adopted. The presentation transfers the fundamental concern of Critical Realism, namely to take a position on the question of the connection between the soul and the body, to the field of sexuality. Essential classical terms of Gestalt theory (reference system, centring) and newer concepts (multiple-field approach) are transferred to sexual events. A Gestalt-theoretical perspective on sexuality as a phenomenon isolated from the whole of human life and coexistence is inconceivable: sexuality is therefore also considered in terms of its function in relationship and attachment. This also applies to the relationship between patient and therapist. The implications of this perspective are discussed in regard to the practical therapeutic approach.
Journal Article
Aesthetics and action
This article focuses on situations and emotional perception. To this end, I start with the Kuleshov effect wherein identical shots of performers manifest different expressions when cut to different contexts. However, I conducted experiments with a twist, using Darth Vader and non-primates, and even here expressions varied with contexts. Building on historically and conceptually linked Gibsonian, Gestalt, phenomenological and pragmatic schools, along with consonant experimental work, I extrapolate these results to defend three interconnected points. First, I argue that while perceiving expression is sometimes about reading minds, it is more squarely about perceiving solicitations or closures for action. Second, I frame expressions as a subcategory of Gibson’s affordances. This includes those showing up through context, in turn suggesting Kuleshov-like scenarios are not mere perceptual tricks. Third, I maintain that situations—with or without other human beings—have action-motivating expressive qualities or what Gestalt theorists called physiognomic characters, following Werner. These likewise emerge through ecological relations, and are very much like affordances and in the world as much as them. With resemblance theories, my account agrees that we perceive expression in the world. However, it indicates a broad range of cases in which expression shows up as consequences of overall situations that solicit or close actions, as opposed to mere resemblance between entities and human expressions.
Journal Article
Towards the most prägnant Gestalt: Leveling and sharpening as contextually dependent adaptive strategies
Gestalt psychologists posited that we always organize our visual input in the best way possible under the given conditions. Both weakening or removing unnecessary details (i.e., leveling) and exaggerating distinctive features (i.e., sharpening) can contribute to achieving a better organization. When is a feature leveled or sharpened, however? We investigated whether the importance of a feature for discrimination among alternatives influences which organizational tendency occurs. Participants were simultaneously presented with four figures composed of simple geometrical shapes, and asked to reconstruct one of these figures in such a way that another participant would be able to recognize it among the alternatives. The four figures differed either qualitatively or only quantitatively (i.e., far or close context). Regarding quantitative differences, two feature dimensions were varied, with one manifesting a wider range of variability across the alternatives than the other. In case of a smaller variability range, the target figure was either at the extreme of the range or had an in-between value. As expected, the results indicated that sharpening occurred more often for the feature with an extreme value, for the feature exhibiting more variability, and for the features of figures presented in the close context, than for the feature with a non-extreme value, exhibiting less variability, or in the far context. In line with Metzger's (1941) definition of prágnant Gestalts, the essence of a Gestalt is context-dependent, and this will influence whether leveling or sharpening of a feature will lead to the best organization in the specific context.
Journal Article