The Gestalt Principles of Perception
In the early 20th century a brilliant group of German psychologists came together and made a remarkable observation in psychological perception that became a very influential and important psychology that is still taught today. These psychologists came up with the idea of gestalts, a German word meaning form or whole. Look at the image below. First look at the individual circles, you will simply see a circle with intersecting lines going through it, but if you look at the series of circles as a whole you will see something else. When looking at the the series of shapes as a whole you will see a cube that appears to rotate periodically. This is good illustration of one gestalt psychologist's favorite sayings: In perception, the whole may exceed the sum of its parts.
According to gestalt psychology our minds organize stimuli by following certain rules for grouping. These rules that were identified by gestalt psychologists are even used by infants. There are three examples of these rules: Proximity, continuity, and closure. In proximity we group nearby things together instead of seeing the set of items as a whole. On the left you simply see 36 circles, but on the right you see three sets of 12 circles because of their proximity.
Continuity is when we perceive things as smooth, continuous patterns opposed to choppy short patterns. Below it is possible to see a pattern of shapes, but instead most people see two lines: a curvy line and a boxy straight line.
The last of the three examples is closure. In closure we assume that a group of objects make a one whole shape instead of smaller separate shapes. Below I have a good example of closure. Instead of seeing three separate circles you see an imaginary white triangle covering up another triangle beneath it.
Below I have posted a link to a website with about the aforementioned examples of gestalt principles. I do not so much find the reading as valuable on this sight because I went over everything said on that website above, but the pictures on this page are very worthwhile to look at. My other recourse was my text book. On page 242 there is a great section on this topic, and it was of great help in forming this page and my examples.
Link:
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm
Recourse:
Psychology Tenth Edition in Modules
Link:
http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/gestaltprinciples/gestaltprinc.htm
Recourse:
Psychology Tenth Edition in Modules