Date: Wednesday, 25.10.23 15:20-17:00 CET
Location: Building S1|15 Room 133
Abstract:
Things look as they do, not only because of the visual input an individual receives, but also because of the way in which the viewer organizes the input in a specific context. The law of Prägnanz states that psychological organization will always be as ‘good’ as possible given the prevailing circumstances. But what does it mean for a psychological organization to be ‘good’, and how do viewers clarify the incoming visual stimuli to achieve the best possible percept?
To achieve the best or clearest overall organization possible, human perceivers use internal representations of good Gestalts as reference points. If no strong pre-existing reference points are available that are similar enough to the incoming visual stimuli, the immediate context can play a more extensive role in disambiguating the visual input. Whereas sometimes these reference points lead to increased sensitivity to change, they can also act as robust magnets, decreasing perceptual distance between neighboring stimuli.
I will present both theoretical and behavioral empirical work related to how input, person, and context interact to perceptually clarify and aesthetically evaluate the incoming visual information.
