The Gestalt Principle originates from the word gestalt, which is a German word that translates to mean 'form'. The Gestaltists discovered that the mind perceives the best, the most correct, and the simplest possible form. When we see things, our eyes transmit the image to the brain where it then interprets what the eyes are seeing so that the rest of the body can also understand. What this Principle is saying is that when we are looking at something, we tend not to see it for what it really is. We instead tend to see things as our minds think that they should be. An example that was given in the text goes as follows: The word 'chack' was used in place of two different words in two different contexts. In one instance, the word was used in a sentence that related to chickens raising their young. In this sentence, the word was glimpsed over and quickly associated with the word 'chick'. In the other example, the word was used in a sentence about banking. In this situation, the word was misread as 'check'. We, as humans, are prone to mistakes. We make this particular type of mistake quite often. This is the reason why we are able to read and understand things that are often misspelled. Another example of this is the Cambridge University Research Project that attempted to prove the Gestalt Principal and to prove that people do not take the time to read each and every word, but instead read by briefly looking at a few letters in the word and are able to determine what the word is just from a brief glance.
Here is an excerpt from the Cambridge University Research Project:
"Do you have a strange mind?
Cna yuo raed tihs? if yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid, too.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulatcly uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Azanmig hhu? Yaeh, and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!
Qoestuin -
Can thsi be doen in ohter lnagugues? Snapsih, Fenrch, Iatilan, Gerek, Rissuan. Chenise, Jaapense, Herbew, Aaribc? "
The Gestalt Principle relates to knowledge gained via sense perception. When we proofread, we do not always look at every letter in every word, but we instead take a brief glance at the word as a whole and are able to understand what the word is just by looking at a few letters in the word. In addition, we also make other mental corrections in our daily lives. For instance, if someone who has never been to Hawaii develops their own mental image of what it looks like, and then they decide to go to Hawaii, they might not see the island for what it really is, and for what it really looks like. Instead, they might only see the island in their own idealized vision. Another example is a true story. Before the last "Harry Potter" movie came out, I read all of the books, including the last one. In fact, I read the last one several times. Due to the fact that I had read the book so many times, I had developed my own images of how every scene played out, how everyone was dressed, and even what the setting looked like. I got so wrapped up in my own version of how the last movie was going to be that when I finally went to the movies, I did not actually 'watch' the film. I paid no attention to the setting or to anything else that I had imagined, because my own ideas had taken over my brain, so that I only saw my own version of the movie. At the time, I thought that it was perfect because it matched my own interpretation perfectly. However, I came to my senses and discovered my mistake a few months later when the movie came out on DVD. By that time, my own image of how the movie should have looked, based on the book, had faded away because it had been such a long time since I had reread the book. When I went to watch the movie again at home, my mind was clear, and I saw the movie for what it really was; nothing like what I had originally pictured. I realized that I had been so blinded by my own vision, that I had not actually seen the movie for what it really was. My mind convinced my eyes that what I was seeing was really what my brain thought that I should have been seeing.
This proves that the Gestalt Principle is true. Our minds do often trick us into thinking that the things that we are seeing are not actually how they really are, but are how we imagine that they are.
