The Gestalt Approach

Whilst studying cognitive psychology, I have recently been incredibly interested in the topic of perception. Perception is described as ‘the subjective experience of sensory information after having been subjected to cognitive processing’ (p.25 – An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology, David Groome). My interest in the topic of perception initially arose when we were discussing in our lecture about how two individuals can be looking at the same image or colour but based on the individual perception, the image will be seen differently. For example, two people can be looking at the same image yet be focusing on different things. They can perceive what the image is portraying differently depending on personal beliefs or mood. The main study that interested me in this field is the Gestalt Approach. This approach delves into the use of reversible imagery to asses people’s perception with something so simple as using a reversible image that includes usually two images. Depending on where the light falls on the retina in our eyes, we see a certain image before another and one usually tends to be clearer than the other. Using these images allows us to investigate how the same stimuli can be seen in more than one way and together rather than separately and individually. This then allowed Gestalt psychologists to come up with laws of perceptual organisation in order to guide their work. This simple yet effective method of understanding perception is what has drawn my interest in this study the most.