From Contour Completion to Image Schemas:
A Modern Perspective on
Gestalt Psychology
Adrian Robert, 1997
Abstract
The Gestalt approach to psychology represents an early but comprehensive and
systematic attempt to relate psychological and neural functioning. When the
approach was first formulated and actively researched, however, too little
was known about brain function to forge a precise and direct connection. As
a result, the approach never fulfilled its initial promise of a rigorously
constructed psychology grounded in physical science and has fallen out of the
favor and attention of most contemporary students of the mind. In this paper
we re-examine Gestalt psychology with reference to what is currently known of
dynamic mechanisms of brain function, particularly by exploring plausible
cortical substrates of perceptual grouping. We suggest, based on this
examination, that although many of the details of the Gestalt proposals are
in need of revision, the approach remains fundamentally viable, and the
elegant character of its grounding and systematicity make it a valuable
framework for organizing present knowledge at both neural and functional
levels. In the reformulation presented, perception and cognition result from
energy minimization at two separated timescales, constrained by
thalamocortical connectivity and activity dynamics in addition to
environmental structure.
Outline
The organization of this paper is as follows. First, sections 2 through 5
review literature in several relevant areas. In Section 2, the
Gestalt approach as it was laid down principally by Max Wertheimer, Kurt
Koffka, and Wolfgang Kohler is reviewed, and the role of the grouping laws
within it are clarified. In Section 3, a range of psychological
phenomena that have been explained by reference to the grouping laws in
different modalities will be presented. These examples will form the basis
for discussion in the remainder of the paper. The reason for examining
grouping in several modalities rather than focusing on just one is to obtain a
better assessment of the generality which was proposed for the Gestalt laws.
In Section 4, the concept of a gestalt, defined as the result of a
grouping process, will be examined and clarified from both psychological and
neurobiological standpoints. Section 5 reviews available information on
the various cortical sensory representations.
Section 6 explains the psychological grouping phenomena based on the
known characteristics of cortical representation by proposing neural
mechanisms for perceptual grouping. These mechanisms have already been
presented and explored in the neural modeling literature; we simply gather
them together and demonstrate how they may be applied to a wider range of
situations then they have been previously. In Section 7, the main
principles underlying the proposed mechanisms are abstracted to form the basis
of a revision of the organizational laws that is in fact more consistent with
the original intents of the Gestalt approach. Section 8 returns to the
subject of applying the Gestalt approach to higher order, more abstract
cognitive phenomena. We suggest that the revised approach is highly
compatible with the views of conceptual structure that are emerging within the
framework of cognitive semantics and thus has great potential to be smoothly
extended to abstract domains. Finally, Section 9 presents conclusions
on the present status and potential of Gestalt psychology.
Conclusions
Regarding the question posed at the beginning of this paper as to whether the
same mechanisms underlie the same perceptual grouping laws in different
modalities, our investigation suggests that the answer is ``yes'', but that
the grouping laws themselves are largely illusory since they are epiphenomena
of an underlying interplay between statistical structure and neural
constraints. This conclusion is, however, in keeping with the more
fundamental conception of the Gestalt approach of perception as a process of
energy minimization parallel at the neural and mental levels. Energy
minimization is now conceived of as proceeding on two separated timescales
given by the dynamics of neural activity and neural plasticity respectively.
Regarding the utility of the Gestalt framework in this revised form, the idea
of statistical abstraction is highly compatible with the cognitive semantics
proposal that conceptual structure develops as a result of embodied
experience. Furthermore, since there appear to be no discontinuities in the
underlying thalamocortical network that simultaneously subserves perception,
mentation, and action, there is the hope of extending conceptual and
mathematical machinery developed for understanding perceptual organization
within the Gestalt framework to understand higher level cognitive functioning.
Consideration of how this might be done reveals that there will probably be
some new wrinkles, however...
Back to online papers page.