Gestalt psychology: Encyclopedia II - Gestalt psychology - Prägnanz

Gestalt psychology - Prägnanz

The most basic rule of gestalt is the law of prägnanz. This law says that we try to experience things in as good a gestalt way as possible. In this sense, "good" can mean several things, such as regular, orderly, simplistic, symmetrical, etc. The other gestalt laws are:

• Law of Closure - Our mind adds missing elements to complete a figure.
• Law of Similarity - Our mind groups similar elements to an entity. The similarity depends on form, color, size and brightness of the elements.

• Law of Proximity - Regional or chronological closeness of elements are grouped by our mind and seen as belonging together.
• Law of Symmetry - Symmetrical images are seen as belonging together regardless of their distance.
• Law of Continuity - The mind continues a pattern, even after it stops.
• Law of Common Fate - Elements with the same moving direction are seen as a unit.

Figure-ground minds have an innate tendency to perceive one aspect of an event as the figure or foreground and the other as the ground or the background.

Under the gestalt theory, these laws not only apply to images, but to thought processes, memories, and our understanding of time.

Examples of the Gestalt experience include the perception of an incomplete circle as a whole or a pattern of dots as a shape - the mind completes the missing pieces through extrapolation. Studies also indicate that simple elements/compositions where the meaning is directly perceived do not offer as much a challenge to the mind as complex ones and hence the latter are preferred over the former.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Prägnanz", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki