In sum, it can be argued that we act to a large extent in terms of our perceptions.
And it is for this reason that the study of perception is a basic one in psychology.
(a) Perception is the and the meaning we give to primitive information.
(b) Koffka made a distinction between the geographical world and the world.
Answers: (a) organization; (b) psychological.
The Gestalt Laws: Is Our Perception of the World
Due to Inborn Organizing Tendencies?
Imagine that you are looking up and you see a single bird flying in the sky. The
bird is a figure,a well-defined perceptual object tending to stand out. The sky is
ground(orbackground), the perceptual field that surrounds the figure. This is
figure-ground perception.One of the features of this kind of perception is that
the figure is usually smaller than the ground and tends to be seen as coming for-
ward from the ground. Other examples include seeing a button on a blouse, a
book on a table, or a car on the road.
It can be argued that this kind of perception, the ability to distinguish a figure
from a field, is an inborn organizing tendency. We aren’t taught to do it. We prob-
ably start doing it spontaneously early in infancy. An infant reaching for a milk
bottle suggests to us that he or she perceives the bottle as a perceptual object, a fig-
ure in a field. Figure-ground perception is probably the most fundamental organ-
izing tendency we possess.
Keep in mind once again that perception does not necessarily reflect the struc-
ture of the world itself. For example, a word printed in black ink on a white page
is perceived as slightly in front of the white surface. We are tempted to think that
this is because the word is “on” the page. But imagine that a black piece of paper
is covered with a stencil. The entire page is inked white, with the exception of the
word. Now, from a physical point of view, the white ink is on the black surface.
Nonetheless, unless carefully studied, the word, emerging in black, will be per-
ceived as slightly forward and on the page.
perception is probably the most fundamental organizing tendency we
possess.
Answer: Figure-ground.
Various illusions demonstrate that figure-ground perception is reversible
under some conditions. The example of the word on a page and the illusions all
strongly suggest that figure-ground perception is a mental construction, not nec-
essarily a fact about the physical world.
Perception: Why Do Things Look the Way They Do? 59
