Gestalt Psychology and Web Design

Question 1

Who is Wilhelm Wundt?

Answer 1

The founding father of experimental psychology.
He believed psychology needed to focus on the person’s subjective experiences and to analyze consciousness under controlled conditions to derive an understanding of how the human mind truly works.

Question 2

What is “Structuralism” seek to understand?

Answer 2

It sought to understand and explain the adult mind in terms of the simplest definable components and how they are pieced together to create complex experiences, as well as how they are correlated to physical, visible events.

Question 3

Structuralism states that perceptions are created…

Answer 3

through the unconscious combination of elements called ‘sensations’ in the human mind.

Question 4

What gave rise to Gestalt Psychology?

Answer 4

Structuralist.

Question 5

What is Gestalt Psychology?

Answer 5

A theory of mind that describes human perception according to the ways in which visual information is brought together to form a whole, meaningful objects from individual visual elements.

Question 6

The illusion of movement induced by alternating fixed images is termed…

Answer 6

apparent movement

Question 7

Who are the three psychologists that founded Gestalt Psychology?

Answer 7

Wertheimer, Koffka, and Kohler

Question 8

What does “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” mean?

Answer 8

We perceive the whole object before the component parts.

Question 9

Gestaltists believe…

Answer 9

The whole is different than the sum of its part.

Question 10

Structuralism states perceptions are created through the unconscious combination of elements called ……………….. in the human mind.

Answer 10

sensations

Question 11

What is “Emergence” in Gestalt principle?

Answer 11

The perceptual experience of meaningful elements appearing instantly from a scene, without conscious identification of the elements that comprise the whole object.

Our minds ability to capture a scene/object without focusing on the individual parts of the object.

Question 12

What is “Reification” in Gestalt principle?

Answer 12

The conversion of an abstract concept into something concrete.

The perceptual ability to form complete representations from limited sensory information.

Question 13

What does it mean when we say “human perception is said to be constructive”?

Answer 13

The visual system helps us to form a comprehensive view of our surroundings, even when there is a restricted amount of information available.

Question 14

Reification is thought to arise from…?

Answer 14

illusory/subjective contours

Question 15

Quote I like

Answer 15

We are often deprived of a complete view of our surroundings and objects within it; therefore, human perception has to fill in the blanks to help us form a complete and meaningful mental representation of each and every visual scene.

Question 16

What is “multistable perception?

Answer 16

A phenomenon where ambiguous shapes, images, and scenes are perceived as multiple, meaningful forms, depending on shifts in attention and other spontaneous, subjective changes.

Question 17

olfactory stimuli

Answer 17

The olfactory system, or sense of smell, is the part of the sensory system used for smelling (olfaction).

Question 18

What is “multistability”?

Answer 18

Our visual system interpreting visual information in a number of different ways by experiencing the sensation of switching between them.

Question 19

T or F: Multistability is largely out of our conscious control.

Answer 19

True

Question 20

Multistable perception is stochasic. What does that mean?

Answer 20

It occurs randomly and the shift from one interpretation to another is difficult to anticipate.

Question 21

Stochastic

Answer 21

Describes something that has a random variable.

Question 22

The Gestalt principle of invariance is…

Answer 22

the human perceptual ability to perceive simple geometrical objects as constant regardless of their ( A.) rotation/orientation, (B.) translation, (C.) scale and elastic deformations, (D.) lighting and variation in component features.

Question 23

What is the difference between animate and inanimate?

Answer 23

animate describes living things, inanimate describe non-living things.

Question 24

Invariance allows us to

Answer 24

recognize most shapes and figures in spite of natural and artificial variation.

Question 25

Figure/Ground Organization

Answer 25

Human perception biases our view to help us focus on specific elements and filter out the rest of the scene.
organisation is used to capture the sensation of an element or part of a visual scene appearing as if it is above or in front of everything else within view.
• figure/ground organisation observes the effect of attention on our view of the world.

Question 26

Figure/ground organization is affected by…

Answer 26

attention

Question 27

‘Law of Pragnanz’,

Answer 27

translates as the law of ‘good figure’. The phenomenon of perceiving visual elements or scenes in their simplest form

Question 28

The simplification of object perception plays an essential role in helping us

Answer 28

see order and regularity in a world of constant distractions and visual competition; with innumerable elements constantly fighting for our limited attention and processing capacity.

Question 29

Human perception is amazing because…?

Answer 29

We can consciously choose how to perceive the world

Question 30

Human visual perception is marked by an innate drive to

Answer 30

‘convert’ visual information into familiar and personally meaningful representations of our environment.

Question 31

The perceptual experience of alternating between the Wolverine figure and the two Batman figures is an example of which Gestalt principle of perceptual organisation?

Answer 31

multistability

Question 32

The ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ image demonstrates how the Gestalt principles of perceptual organisation…?

Answer 32

can be used to play with our perception of the world.

The Gestalt laws do not just enable designers to improve the functional aspects of the viewing and user experiences. They can be utilised to enhance the pleasurable, aesthetic, and fun qualities within our products.

Question 33

The Gestalt principles of perceptual organization bias human visual perception to the extent that once we have identified a meaningful pattern…?

Answer 33

We are then almost incapable of then ‘unseeing’ that pattern