28th International Congress of Psychology August 8 ... - U-netSURF

Tuesday, 10 August 2004
2001 INVITED SYMPOSIUM
The origin and the present status of Gestalt psychology
Convener and Chair: T. Oyama, Japan
Co-convener: V. Sarris, Germany
2001.1 Quantification of Gestalt laws, T. Oyama, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
Quantification of Gestalt laws was made on the basis of the experimental results of perceptual
grouping and apparent motion in bistable stimulus situations. A combination of a larger horizontal
separation between the homogenous stimulus elements and a smaller constant vertical separation
between heterogeneous stimulus elements produced two kinds of apparent motion or perceptual
grouping with equal probabilities. Such matched separations between the homogenous stimulus
elements were obtained for various heterogeneities in colors, brightness, size and/or shape. It was
also indicated that perceptual effects of differences worked additively across different perceptual
dimensions. A perceptual state-space model is proposed.
2001.2 Comparative perception: Gestalt psychophysics, V. Sarris, Frankfurt University,
Frankfurt, Germany
Relational psychophysics, as illustrated by the well known frame-of-reference and transposition
phenomena, is based on the principles of “stimulus ratio” and “shifting level”, according to the
axiom that all stimulus-response effects are interrelated. This Gestalt-psychophysics approach is in
line with modern research on (a) perceptual illusions (e.g. geometric-optical distortions, GOD)
and (b) transposition (TP) shifts studied with humans and other animals. Out of several unsolved
issues, two fundamental questions for future research are of special interest, namely the
comparative measurement issue of psychophysics and the cognitive neuroscience approach (Sarris
2003, 2004).
2001.3 Treatment of Gestalt factors in visual illusion and aesthetic preference, K. Noguchi,
Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan
The present study reviews our experimental-phenomenological work on visual illusion and
empirical aesthetic work, and examines how aesthetic preference is influenced by Gestalt factors
determining visual illusions including anomalous surface and perceptual transparency as well as
geometrical illusion. Participants made both of psychophysical judgments and of aesthetic
preferences for the same test pattern. The results showed that illusions and aesthetic preferences
changed similarly as a function of Gestalt variables. It seems that the paradigm to investigate
aesthetic phenomena along with perceptual structures is useful to bridge the gap between
experimental phenomenology and experimental aesthetics.
2001.4 Geons and Gestalts, I. Biederman, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA,
USA
What is the function of the tendency in perceptual organization towards good gestalt? Geon theory
(Biederman, 1987) proposes that we can understand good gestalt in terms of fundamental
277