How has psychology’s focus changed over time? The focus started as “Magellans of the mind” and had very few women involved. Eventually evolved to modern psychology, focused on behavior AND mental processes. Critical thinking, biophysical approach, two-track mind (dual-processing capacity), exploring human strengths.

Cognitive psychology is the science of how we think. It’s concerned with our inner mental processes such as attention, perception, memory, action planning, and language.

Which of the following is one of the reasons that Gestalt psychology did not become more popular in the United States? The theories were not based on measurable data. The rise of behaviorism overshadowed Gestalt psychology. European psychology is not as rigorous as American psychology.

Law of ContinuityThe Law of Continuity

The Principle of Closure states that the human mind combines the visual information available to form a meaningful object rather than seeing it as individual elements.

The Law of Proximity is the gestalt grouping law that states elements that are close together tend to be perceived as a unified group. The Law of Similarity is the gestalt grouping law that states that elements that are similar to each other tend to be perceived as a unified group.

What are the gestalt principles of design? The classic principles of the gestalt theory of visual perception include similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, figure/ground, and symmetry & order (also known as prägnanz). Others, such as “common fate,” have been added in recent years.

Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been “placed,” or “put together.” There is no exact equivalent in English.

Closure, Continuity, Proximity, Similarity, and simplicity are the 5 grouping principles of gestalt psychology, humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns and objects.

The principle of similarity states that when things appear to be similar to each other, we group them together. And we also tend to think they have the same function. For instance, in this image, there appear to be two separate and distinct groups based on shape: the circles and the squares.

Which statement best summarizes the focus of the Gestalt psychologists? perception.

What is the most precise explanation for why many aspects of psychology (and most of cognitive psychology) rely on inferential methods? Psychology often demands hypotheses about processes that cannot be observed directly in order to explain the capacities and the behaviors that we can observe.

one of the gestalt principles of organization. It states that people tend to perceive objects in alignment as forming smooth, unbroken contours.

Examples. The “faces or vases” illustration is one of the most frequent demonstrations of figure-ground. If you see the white as the figure, then you perceive a vase. If you see the black as the figure, then you see two faces in profile.

Proximity

There are three types of figure-ground relationships:

• Stable (above left) It’s clear what’s figure and what’s ground.
• Reversible (above center) Both figure and ground attract the viewer’s attention equally.
• Ambiguous (above right) Elements can appear to be both figure and ground simultaneously.