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13.4: Perceiving Form

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    One of the important processes required in vision is the perception of form. German psychologists in the 1930s and 1940s, including Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), and Wolfgang Kohler (1887–1967), argued that we create forms out of their component sensations based on the idea of the gestalt, a meaningfully organized whole. The idea of the gestalt is that the “whole is more than the sum of its parts.” Some examples of how gestalt principles lead us to see more than what is actually there are summarized in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\).

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    Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Summary of Gestalt Principles of Form Perception

    This page titled 13.4: Perceiving Form is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Kate Votaw.

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