Chap 14-Gestalt Psychology

Law of Pregnanz

Pregnant means "ultimate meaning" or "essence" According to the Law of Pregnanz the whole (force field) exists prior to the pats (sensory data) and it is the whole that gives the parts their identity Sensory data- the brains force field-the perception

Founders of Gestalt psychology

The main founders of Gestalt psychology were Wertheimer, Koffka and Kohler. All were Europeans and all emigrated to the US ad took faculty positions in colleges in the northeastern US

Wertheimer's Contribution

The original contribution of Wertheimer is that he realized that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So whereas previous psychologists took an empiricism, bottom-up approach, Wertheimer took a Kantian, rationalist, tope-down approach

Insight learning

By studying chimpanzees Kohler made the following observations - they will stack several boxes together, climbing the stack and using a stick to retrieve a banana having from the ceiling - they will connect two sticks together to form a longer one that will allow them to retrieve the banana outside the cage, our of arm's reach Kohler concluded the chimps did not arrive to the solution by trial and error but by experiencing an insight. For Kohler. insight learning requires a perceptual restructuring of the entire field, usually suddenly, without gradual accumulation

Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt psychologists were against the molecular or elemental approach that was used by the behaviorists (S-R association) or the Wundtian followers (elements of thought). The Gestaltists advocated taking a molar approach (they were holists).

Wolfgang Kohler

Had studied with the great physicist, Max Planck, and was greatly influenced by Wertheimer's ideas about the whole of psychology functions. Kohler was impressed with the way that physicists approached their problems from their entirety, rather than as collections of independent facts

Wertheimer's additional experiments

He did additional experiments to show that the phi phenomenon was not based on learned movements of eyes are based on elements but was a perception that emerged out of the parts

Kurt Koffka

He wrote an influential aticle that was published in psychological Bulletin entitles "Perception: An Introduction to Gestalt Theory" that spread the message of Gestalt psychology to the US. Coffee was the most prolific writer of the Gestalt psychologists and essentially served as the spokesperson for the Gestalt school.

The Founding of Gestalt Psychology

Max Wertheimer- The formal founding of Gestalt Psychology is credited to Wertheimer after he discovered the phi phenomenon-the apparent movement of light when two lights are flashed sequentially 60 ms apart

Wertheimer's interpretations

Wertheimer observes the perception of movement when there is no actual movement. He realizes that this has a great significance for psychology. It means that perception 1. Does not correspond to sensory stimulation on a one-to-one basis 2. Perceptions cannot be predicted from the sensations forming them 3. The whole percept is greater than the sum of its parts

Alternative explanations of Apparent Motivation

Wundt had an explanation of this based on learned eye movements. Wundt's explanation was that the tracking of the stimuli causes the eye muscles to move. The movements of the muscles is associated with past experiences of movement of objects and therefore the sensation of eye muscle movement leads one to assume or "perceive" apparent motion