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Ninth Edition. 10. Gestalt Theory. Max Wertheimer (1880—1943). Considered Founder of Gestalt Psychology. Experience Cannot Be Understood by Analyzing its Parts. The phenomenological experience is different from the parts that make it up. The phi phenomenon A fine painting
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Ninth Edition 10 Gestalt Theory
Max Wertheimer (1880—1943) • Considered Founder of Gestalt Psychology
Experience Cannot Be Understood by Analyzing its Parts • The phenomenological experience is different from the parts that make it up. • The phi phenomenon • A fine painting • A concert performance
Opposition to Voluntarism, Structuralism, and Behaviorism • All making the same basic error in using an elementistic approach. • Gestalt as Phenomenology: • A phenomenologist studies meaningful, intact mental events without dividing them for further analysis.
Opposition to Voluntarism, Structuralism, and Behaviorism • Gestalt • holistic • molar • subjective • nativistic • cognitive
Opposition to Voluntarism, Structuralism, and Behaviorism • Behavioristic • atomistic • elementistic • molecular • objective • empiricistic • behavioral
Major Theoretical Concepts • Field Theory • A field can be defined as a dynamic, interrelated system, any part of which influences every other part. • Nothing in it exists in isolation.
Levin and Field Theory • A psychological fact, according to Lewin, is anything of which a person is conscious. • A person’s life space is the sum of all of these psychological facts.
Levin and Field Theory • Only those things consciously experienced can influence behavior. • A change in any psychological fact rearranges the entire life space.
Major Theoretical Concepts • Nature versus Nurture • The Gestaltists assigned an active role to the brain. • It is the “nature” of the brain to impose organization and meaning on sensory information. • Organizational abilities characterize any physical system, the brain being but one example.
Major Theoretical Concepts • Koffka (1963 [1935]) defined the Law of Prägnanz as follows: • “Psychological organization will always be as good as the controlling circumstances allow” (p. 110). • Good = simple, complete, concise, symmetrical, and harmonious.
Major Theoretical Concepts • Isomorphism • External stimulation causes reactions in the brain. • We experience those reactions as they occur in the brain. • Koffka (1963 [1935]) : motion of the atoms and molecules of the brain’ are not ‘fundamentally different from thoughts and feelings (p. 62).
Major Theoretical Concepts • Active Brain/Active Mind • Consider • Blind Spots in human visual field • Charles Bonnet Syndrome • The Agnosias
Major Theoretical Concepts • Geographical Environment versus Behavioral Environment • We behave according to what we believe to be true. • If you think there is no exam tomorrow, how will you behave tonight?
Gestalt Principles of Learning • Learning, to the Gestaltist, is a cognitive phenomenon. • The organism “comes to see” the solution after pondering a problem. • When the solution comes, it comes suddenly as an insight.
Gestalt Principles of Learning • The Presolution Period • Trial-and-error that is cognitive rather than behavioral. • When the correct strategy is discovered, insight is said to have occurred. • Perhaps you can experience the “Aha” that accompanies insightful learning by trying to find the hidden Schnauzer in the next slide.
Gestalt Principles of Learning • Insightful Learning Summarized • The transition from presolution to solution is sudden and complete. • Performance based on a solution gained by insight is usually smooth and free of errors.
Gestalt Principles of Learning • Insightful Learning Summarized • A solution to a problem gained by insight is retained for a considerable length of time. • A principle gained by insight is easily applied to other problems.
Gestalt Principles of Learning • Transposition • When a principle learned in one problem-solving situation is applied to the solution of another problem. • For example: Chickens were fed on a dark shade of gray paper but not on a lighter shade. • Given a choice between the two shades of gray, they chooses the darker one.
The Transposition Problem • After preliminary training, the choice was between the dark paper on which it was trained and a still darker sheet.
The Transposition Problem • Behaviorists predict that the animal would approach the lighter of the two shades of gray in the new situation because it is the exact one that had been reinforced.
The Transposition Problem • Gestaltists predicted that what was a relational principle; the animal learned the principle of approaching the darker of the two objects. This prediction was generally correct.
Spence’s Behavioristic Explanation • Based on Generalization Approach Generalization (solid line) minus Avoidance Generalization (dashed line)
Spence’s Behavioristic Explanation • Explains relativistic transposition. • Also explains failure of transposition. • More widely accepted than the Gestalt point of view.
Education and Productive Thinking • Wertheimer • When one acts on memorized facts or rules without understanding them, one can often make stupid mistakes. • Traditional approaches to teaching inhibit development of understanding. • Those approaches: logic and associationism.
Gestalt Psychology and Reinforement • Gestaltists view unsolved problems as creating ambiguity or an organizational disbalance in the student’s mind. • Reduction of ambiguity can be seen as the Gestalt equivalent to the behaviorist’s notion of reinforcement…an intrinsic reinforcer.
Kurt Koffka and the Memory Trace • Current experience gives rise to what he called a memory process. • When a process is terminated, a trace of its effect remains in the brain. • Thereafter, all similar processes interact with the memory trace.
Kurt Koffka and the Memory Trace • Koffka (1963 [1935]) • A trace “exerts an influence on the process in the direction of making it similar to the process which originally produced the trace” (p. 553)
Kurt Koffka and the Memory Trace • With repetition, the trace becomes more and more influential over the process. • Implies that immediate experience is warped by memory.
