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Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2019

Perceptual Organization

Résumé

The seminal work by the Gestalt School led to the formulation of Gestalt principles, such as the principle of Prägnanz, and Gestalt laws of perceptual organization that have been critically important to our understanding of visual information processing in the human brain. The perceptual integration of contrast information across co-linear space, and the organization of objects in the 2D image plane into figure and ground, convey the most elementary basis to our understanding of the visual world. Gestalt theory continues to generate powerful concepts and insights for perceptual science even today, when placed within the context of image-base decision making by human minds and machines. The laws and principles which predict how perceptual qualities can be extracted from the most elementary visual signals were discovered by the Gestalt psychologists [1, 2, 3]. Their seminal work has inspired visual science ever since, and has led to exciting discoveries which have confirmed the Gestalt idea that the human brain would have an astonishing capacity for selecting and combining critical visual signals to generate organized representations for decision making and action. This capacity of selection and integration drives what Gestalt theory refers to as perceptual organization [1-3], i.e. the correct estimation of relative positions, trajectories, and distances of objects represented in planar images, the perceptual construction of representations of form from motion, and most of our perception of three-dimensional object properties. The Gestalt laws [1] of perceptual organization, of which the law of good continuation is a particular example, describe the necessary stimulus or input conditions under the premise of a so-called principle of pregnancy (Prägnanzprinzip), which postulates that objects in the visual field will produce the simplest and most complete solution possible for perceptual organization. This entails that the simplest input configurations of contrast and orientation in the visual field will enable human observers to assess which parts of the input is likely to belong together to form a unified visual object or shape, or which parts are likely to be nearer and which further away from the observer if these represented objects (i.e. their image representations) were seen in the real world. The problem relative to how planar image contents will be grouped into perceptual representations of figure and ground [4-8] is one of the study grounds the Gestalt laws have been designed for. Figure-ground representation is a perceptual solution that enables the observer to assess which objects in the image would be likely to be nearer and which objects would be likely to be further away in a real world configuration. Figure-ground solutions are mediated by specific image cues to shape and to relative distance, involving local signals of contrast [9-18], colour [7-8,19-21], and orientation [22-30] to fill in specific regions of an image. This enables the perception of surfaces on the basis of a subtle interplay of visual mechanisms driving perceptual grouping and perceptual segregation. The associated perceptual sensations of local contrast enhancement make visual objects in the image appear to stand in front of Gestalt theory [1] has provided perceptual science with a conceptual framework relating to brain mechanisms that determine the way we see the visual world. This is referred to as "Perceptual Organization" and has inspired researchers in Psychology, Neuroscience and Computational Design ever since. The major Gestalt principles, such as the principle of Prägnanz, and more importantly the Gestalt laws of perceptual organization, have been critically important to our understanding of visual information processing, how the brain detects order in what we see, and derives likely perceptual representations from statistically significant structural regularities. The perceptual integration of contrast information across co-linear space for the organization of objects in the 2D image plane into figure and ground convey the most elementary basis to our understanding of the visual world. Gestalt theory continues to generate powerful concepts and insights for perceptual science even today, where it is to be placed in the context of image-base decision making by human minds and machines.
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Dates et versions

hal-02490764 , version 1 (25-02-2020)

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  • HAL Id : hal-02490764 , version 1

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Birgitta Dresp. Perceptual Organization. MDPI. Encyclopedia, , 2019. ⟨hal-02490764⟩
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