PSY 3520 Sensation and Perception

Form Perception

Form Perception Lecture Outline

I.

II.

III.

Perceptual Organization
A.
The Beginnings of Gestalt Psychology
B.
The Law of Pragnanz
1.
Form Perception
2.
Laws of Organization
C.
Problems with the Gestalt Approach
Modern Extensions of Gestalt Psychology
A.
What stimulus properties are responsible for grouping?
B.
How does grouping affect our ability to extract
information from a display?
C.
How are figure and ground analyzed by the visual
system?
Perceptual Processing
Triesman Feature Integration Theory
A.
Preattentive Stage
B.
Focused Attention Stage

I. Form Perception
_____ is an inherent property of all objects
The perception of objects is easy for
humans, whereas it is very difficult to
design computers to perceive objects
Examples of tasks that are easy for humans
yet difficult for computers
1.
2.
3.

We see two, 3-dimensional

forms

Humans are able to take a 2-dimensional scene from the

retina and translate the image into a correct perception of the
scene.
The visual form is usually considered to be a composite of
more elementary features.
The _______ Psychologists were interested in perceptual
organization how these elementary features were grouped
into larger units.

The Beginnings of Gestalt

Psychology
Gestalt Psychology was founded in 1912
by Max Wertheimer
1910 he discovered ___________ (the
__________________)
Movement is perceived between 2 stationary
stimuli
Concluded
__________________________________
___________________________________

The Beginnings of Gestalt

Psychology
The Gestalt Psychologists rejected the
idea that perceptions are constructed from
sensations
They believed the stimulus must be
considered as a whole
The contours of the cube are
not physically present they
are caused by the rest of the
configuration.

The Beginnings of Gestalt

Psychology
Wolfgang Khler and Kurt Koffka were
also involved in the beginnings of Gestalt
Psychology
The Gestalt Psychologists suggested that
there were laws of organization
They wanted to determine the rules that
describe what your perception will be
given certain stimulus conditions

Laws of Organization
The laws of organization are a series of
rules that describe what your perception
will be given certain stimulus conditions
Law 1 Law of Pragnanz (German means
good figure)
The Law of Pragnanz is the central law of
Gestalt Psychology
Law of Prgnanz is also called the law of
good figure and the law of simplicity

__________________

_____________________

______________________
Connected points,
either straight or
curved are seen as
belonging together
Lines are seen in a
way that they follow
the smoothest path

________________________
Kaswan (1957) memory and continuity

Conclusion Better recall for pairs with good continuity.

_______________________

____________________

_______________________
Things that are moving in the same
direction appear to be grouped together

______________
______________________
Objects form groups if the groups appear
familiar of meaningful

Figure-Ground Segregation
Another issue the Gestalt Psychologists
were interested in was our perception of
figure-ground stimuli
More specifically, they were interested in
figure-ground segregation - how we
perceive objects when they form figures
against backgrounds

Figure-Ground Segregation

Figure-Ground Segregation

Figure-Ground Segregation

Properties of Figure-Ground
Segregation
1.
2.
3.
4.

Properties of the Stimuli seen as

the Figure
Symmetry
Convexity
Convexity usually overpowers symmetry

Orientation
Meaning

What Gestalt Psychology Tells us

Gestalt Psychology tells us that we have a
number of laws of organization that help
govern the way we group parts of a
stimulus together and also the way we
separate figure from ground.

Problems with the

Gestalt Approach
The application of the law of simplicity
how can you tell what is the simpler
perception? There is no way to measure
simplicity.
How applicable are the Gestalt laws to
real life? What happens when we move
from the 2-dimensional pictures to the 3dimensional world?

Problems with the

Gestalt Approach
What happens when two Gestalt laws
conflict with one another?

 We actually do see two asymmetrical

patterns, but the resulting pattern should
be as simple as possible.
What other Gestalt law takes over?

Problems with the

Gestalt Approach
1
2
3
4

II. Modern Extensions of Gestalt

Psychology
Modern researchers have gone beyond
the descriptive level used by the Gestalt
psychologists
Three questions we will try to answer
using the more quantitative approaches
used by modern researchers

 What stimulus properties are responsible for

grouping?
Olson & Attneave (1970) found orientation to be an
important property for grouping.

How does grouping affect our ability to extract

information from a display?
Prinzmetal & Banks (1976 & 1977)

How are figure and ground analyzed by the

visual system?
Julesz (1978) and Weisstein & Wong (1986)

III. Perceptual Processing

The observer carries out mental
operations on the stimulus to arrive at a
perception of the stimulus.
Perception involves an active observer.
Information processing and perception
the whole is constructed from information
taken from its smaller parts.

_______________________
The focus now becomes what are the
basic units of analysis used by the visual
system?
Anne Triesman approached this by
proposing that perception takes place in
two or more stages.

________________________
Two stages of processing
1.

2.

Preattentive Stage
Processing is _______________
No conscious attention is required
because processing occurs automatically

O
Q

O
O

Triesman suggests that primitives are

extracted at the preattentive stage.
O
O

Primitive basic property of a stimulus

Triesman suggests that primitives have popout boundaries

 Triesman investigated primitives using

visual search tasks
Visual Search Task identify a target
stimulus in a field of distractors.
The O pops out because
of its curvature property.

V
V

V
O
V
V
V V

V
V

This task takes longer because the

target shares properties with distractors.

Q P Q P
Q
P R
P
Q
P
Q Q
Q P
Q
Q
P P

 Triesman identified the following as

primitives

Focused Attention Phase

The primitives that are extracted in the
preattentive stage are combined in the
focused attention stage.
This stage is NOT automatic conscious
attention is required.
L
L T
L
L
L
L L
T L
T
L T
L L
L L
L
L
L
T
L
T
L L
L
L
L

Because primitive features are

shared, conscious attention is
required.

O
V
O

V
O

O
O

V
V

O
V

V
O

V V
O
O

V
O

V
V

O
V

O
V

O
O
V

O
V

V
O

V
O