Publish at January 27 2015 Updated November 05 2025
We perceive an elephant, a bicycle or a computer as whole objects before we see the parts - trunk, gear, keyboard. But we can also see a trunk, a derailleur or a keyboard and know what they belong to; we also see them as whole elements before perceiving their hairs, gears or keys.
One of the hallmarks of intelligence is the ability to discern, and this ability is aided by context: knowing the context, we can quickly clarify which elements are important and ignore the others.
Our tendency towards the optimum, i.e. maximum results for minimum effort, also concerns our perceptions and mental processes. Why go to the trouble of thinking and remembering when you can simply look it up or ask Google?
In course design, students need to make connections between concepts to understand and learn, so it's best to facilitate the connections and make sure they don't miss any. There are 6 laws of perception identified in Gestalt. Some of them have been intuitively known for much longer. Using these laws makes lessons smoother and easier to follow; it enriches the context and makes up for the absence of the physical material to be studied.
Handling cells or electrons, bits or pixels, factors or averages ends up leaving a feeling of emptiness if you don't make things a little easier.
Law of similarity and contrast
Elements that have the same appearance will be grouped together in the reader's mind.
This grouping can be done either spatially or by means of a label, color, shape, font, etc. The principles of navigation or classification use this law. Things without relationships will obviously appear dissimilar. Failure to do so can lead to confusion, to the association of unrelated elements.
Law of proximity
Elements that are physically close together appear to be connected to each other, and are seen as potentially related.
The relationship may be hierarchical, symbolic, affective, mathematical or other, but once the convention is known, the space between elements plays on their qualification in people's minds.
Law of simplicity (Pragnanz)
Complex or vague images are interpreted in their simplest terms.
A large bundle of nodes is interpreted as a chaotic set of nodes, the nodes being the simplest element identified. An overloaded page is interpreted as a "complicated page", this being the simplest element recognized. Excessively long sentences, rare words and undefined, learned words lead the reader to recognize what he knows well... that it's a text that's not for him. So, a minimum of simplicity is necessary, adapted to the level of the students.
Law of completion
The mind tends to complete what is missing from its acquired knowledge and experience.
In practice, we will seize on any element that can help to link what is present into a coherent whole, even if the element in question is totally absent.
In the example shown here, there is no white triangle, yet we "see" a white triangle. This is what we do when we replace words we don't understand with approximate synonyms. The effects of this law can be disastrous, so it's best not to leave any "gaps" to fill.
Law of continuity
When we perceive a rule linking elements, we prefer to follow the same rule rather than change it, assuming that elements sharing this rule are linked to the same set.
A ball follows a trajectory, a bird flies in one direction, a guiding thread accompanies an idea. If you change direction, then it must be a different idea! Simple. So it's better to carry an idea through to its general conclusion than to digress into ramifications, even if it means coming back to it later.
Law of common fate
What moves together is part of the same whole
Tiger stripes don't move like grass stems. The tiger is not part of the field. Simply a question of evolution, this "programming" allows us to associate moving particles into coherent wholes. Is it the same for ideas? We can assume so.
A flowing course respects these simple rules, often intuitively. We can of course take other experimental paths, who knows what we might discover, but the fact is that our perception and information processing circuits are "wired" in a certain way, and taking this into account when designing courses and training sites leads to better results.
References
Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms - Max Wertheimer (1923)
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Wertheimer/Forms/forms.htm
Gestalt Laws of Perceptual Organization - Kendra Cherry - About.com
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws_2.htm
How To Use The 6 Laws of Perception in eLearning - Christopher Pappas - E-learning Industry
http://elearningindustry.com/tips-use-6-laws-of-perception-in-elearning
You might also like:
From grade to value: assessment at the service of the learner
If we shift some of the responsibility for assessment onto the learner, we achieve a dual objective: making assessment a learning process and developing the learner's critical judgment.
Successful public speaking is first and foremost about dominating a place.
Can you speak in different places and express yourself in the same way? How does a place shape our expression? How can we tame the places where we speak, and learn from them in the process?
Our era can be described as hyper-innovative coupled with a great deal of casualness. Not everyone is equally adept at seizing opportunities. This is the case with school and university structures; even as the custodian of the future of future generations, they are the last to move.
The disciplines of sensitivity are just as important to the formation of a human being as the disciplines of knowledge. Dare to articulate the two.
How to approach AI as a case study in elementary school?
It's easy to broach the subject of AI with university students, but how can we do the same with primary school children?
