Gestalt Theory dominated psychology until the 1920's, and made two vital contributions to our understanding of perception. These are the laws or principles of grouping, and the concept of figure-ground relationships. The purpose of this paper is to examine the principles of the Gestalt approach to perceptual organization, and its flaws. One of the main challenges to the Gestalt approach is that these principles are heuristics. A heuristic is a rule of thumb approach to solving a problem. For example, if you play hide-and-seek with a small child, it would be a good idea to consider looking in all the places a child would think to hide. This seems an effective solution, but would not guarantee finding the child. This criticism becomes more evident when the principles are discussed in detail.
There are six major principles or laws of perceptual organization. First, there is Pragnanz, which is translated from German to mean "good figure" . This is the central law of Gestalt psychology, and is also known as the law of good figure or the law of simplicity. It states that; every stimulus pattern is seen in such a way that the resulting structure is as simple as possible . For example, if the stimulus pattern is the universally recognized MasterCard symbol. The Gestalt principle predicts that what we see is two intertwined circles, not three complex shapes. The Gestaltist would believe that the brain actively transforms sensory stimulation as it comes in whereas the structuralist would believe that the information perceived is directly tied to the effect it has on the brain. The brain actively applies the law of Pragnanz. The next principle is the law of Similarity. Similar things appear to be grouped together. Gestalt psychologists found that grouping occurs due to similarity of lightness, hue, size or orientation. For examples, most people would perceive vertical columns of rows and circles.
