GESTALT / Laws of Grouping

Maybe you can remember these really simple designs. I showed them to you once in class, and we talked about its meaning. They try to explain, in a very schematic way, the ideas behind visual perception, according to Gestaltism, which was originally a German school of psychology.  
    At the begining of the twentieth century, those Gestalt * specialists thought (many people still think they were right) that we are all born with basic but complex ways of visually-grasping the environment around us. They argued, very significantly, that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts (What do you think this sentence means?).

Aquí se ve expresada la idea básica -a través de un aspecto concreto: la BUENA CONTINUIDAD- de la preeminencia del CONJUNTO sobre la suma de las PARTES

   
What you see here (again) are representations of some of the Gestalt Laws of Grouping:

-1-

-2-

-3-

-4-

-5-

If you pay attention, in these diagrams you will maybe recognise several of those Laws at the same time. 
  
-  What do you think?... (Try to find out in HERE... Sorry!: for some reason or another this "Hot Potatoes" device doesn´t work properly!... En español: no se pueden ver la imágenes, a la izquierda del "matching exercise". Sin embargo, tened en cuenta que son las mismas que preceden a este párrafo, a excepción de la última; por lo tanto, se trata de las numeradas como 1, 2, 3 y 4). 
-  What sort of attributes can make two shapes similar or even equal?... 
-  Try to point out these attributes in images 1, 2 and 3. 

There is a Gestalt concept called prägnanz (beware!: nothing to do with "pregnancy"). It might be described as "pithiness" (en español, más o menos, CONCISIÓN, aunque se aplica el germanismo "PREGNANCIA"). From this concept the so-called Law of Prägnanz is derived, which says that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetrical and simple.

Now, you can find a multiple-choice quiz on this LINK where you can find out whether you have understood a few ideas or not. 


* Gestalt - "Essence or shape of an entity's complete form"