A century of Gestalt psychology in visual perception: I. Perceptual grouping and figure–ground organization.

Abstract

In 1912, Max Wertheimer published his paper on phi motion, widely recognized as the start of Gestalt psychology. Because of its continued relevance in modern psychology, this centennial anniversary is an excellent opportunity to take stock of what Gestalt psychology has offered and how it has changed since its inception. We first introduce the key findings and ideas in the Berlin school of Gestalt psychology, and then briefly sketch its development, rise, and fall. Next, we discuss its empirical and conceptual problems, and indicate how they are addressed in contemporary research on perceptual grouping and figure-ground organization. In particular, we review the principles of grouping, both classical (e.g., proximity, similarity, common fate, good continuation, closure, symmetry, parallelism) and new (e.g., synchrony, common region, element and uniform connectedness), and their role in contour integration and completion. We then review classic and new image-based principles of figure-ground organization, how it is influenced by past experience and attention, and how it relates to shape and depth perception. After an integrated review of the neural mechanisms involved in contour grouping, border-ownership, and figure-ground perception, we conclude by evaluating what modern vision science has offered compared to traditional Gestalt psychology, whether we can speak of a Gestalt revival, and where the remaining limitations and challenges lie. A better integration of this research tradition with the rest of vision science requires further progress regarding the conceptual and theoretical foundations of the Gestalt approach, which will be the focus of a second review paper.

Holistic processing of static and moving faces.

“…Alternatively, the contribution of rigid motion to holistic processing may be overshadowed by more salient cues supporting holistic face processing. Rigid motion provides additional Gestalt cues for grouping facial parts together (Piepers & Robbins, 2012;Wagemans et al, 2012), which should facilitate holistic processing according to the dual-route hypothesis (Curby et al, 2016;Curby et al, 2013;Zhao et al, 2016aZhao et al, , 2016b. However, such facilitation may be less evident when holistic processing can be activated by more influential factors (e.g., those provided by normal upright faces and expertise with them), which leaves little room for facial motion to further enhance holistic processing.…”

“…Moreover, since front, quarter, and profile views of static faces are all processed holistically (McKone, 2008), it is not likely that they would no longer elicit holistic processing when they are presented sequentially (i.e., forming rigid motion). On the contrary, by moving all facial parts in a natural and synchronized way, rigid motion may potentially reinforce the perceptual grouping of facial parts via Gestalt principles of common fate and synchrony (Alais, Blake, & Lee, 1998;Lee & Blake, 1999;Piepers & Robbins, 2012;Wagemans et al, 2012).…”

Visualizing Sets: An Empirical Comparison of Diagram Types

“…With regard to linear diagrams, we quote Wagemans et al "[the] comparison of features lying on pairs of line segments is significantly faster if the segments are parallel or mirror symmetric, suggesting a fast grouping of the segments based on these cues [26]", who reference Feldman [27] as the source of this insight. As we have seen, linear diagrams use parallel line segments and so are thought to be effective for this reason.…”

No evidence for surface organization in Kanizsa configurations during continuous flash suppression

“…This process of perceptual organization occurs in accordance with a set of grouping principles, including proximity, similarity, good continuation, common fate, connectedness, or closure (Wagemans et al, 2012). Given the apparent ease with which perceptual grouping happens, several studies have tested the extent to which it operates independently from attention and/or awareness (Alais & Blake, 2015;Gillebert & Humphreys, 2015;Schwarzkopf & Rees, 2015).…”