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Animals in psychological research
Published in Clive R. Hollin, An Introduction to Human–Animal Relationships, 2021
Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967) was a German psychologist who, along with Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Fritz Perls (1893–1970), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), was a prominent figure in the formation of Gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology was concerned with how we make sense of our environment. In perceiving the world around we do not focus on every individual element it contains, rather we perceive elements to be part of a greater whole, a gestalt, which can be more than simply the sum of its parts. While no longer a mainstream theory, Gestalt psychology proved to be an important step in the study of human sensation and perception.
The Tao of Pain
Published in Peter Wemyss-Gorman, John D Loeser, Pain, Suffering and Healing, 2018
However, Capra believed that it is not possible to understand fully the properties of the parts without knowledge of the dynamics of the whole. The parts cannot be well defined and they may show different properties depending on the context in which they are examined. Scientists from other disciplines have gradually realised that we have a universe that is more a network of relationships than one of fundamental building blocks. Thus we have a unity and a mutual relationship of all things and events. These are seen as interdependent and inseparable and as transitory patterns of the same ultimate reality. This type of approach has long been recognised by the proponents of gestalt psychology.
Cognitive development in the classroom
Published in David Cohen, How the child's mind develops, 2017
The theory was based a little on Gestalt psychology which suggested that people perceive patterns or wholes. Psychologists who study the eye movements involved in reading have found that good adult readers typically fixate on part of a word, then scan forward in what are called saccades (short, jerky movements) to see what’s coming next. Wood and Terrell (1997) suggested that children who are learning to read are much more hesitant in their pattern of looking. They fixate the letters, then scan ahead, then often regress to look at the letters again. The visual skills needed to read can be mastered by the age of 3 for a child to read well.
Structuralist Mental Representation of Dual-action Demands: Mechanisms of Improved Dual-task Performance after Practice in Older Adults
Published in Experimental Aging Research, 2021
Another venerable stream of theory, namely Gestalt psychology (in particular in the Wertheimer, 1922, tradition), instead proposes that complex mental representations (“the whole”) can also be represented differently from the sum of its parts. Thus, a combination of the component response demands [A] and [B] might not result in [A + B] or [A→B], but rather in a distinct representation [C], without any resemblance to its components. This holistic account of mental representations is therefore in direct opposition to the structuralist account. However, this account has usually been studied with respect to perceptual representations (see Wagemans et al., 2012), and has only rarely been transferred to multiple action control (see Klapp & Jagacinski, 2011 for a notable exception).
From Quantum Physics to Quantum Hypnosis: A Quantum Mind Perspective
Published in International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 2020
Bistable perceptual phenomena is a fascinating topic in the area of perception. If a stimulus has an ambiguous interpretation, such as a Necker cube, the interpretation tends to oscillate across time behaving as quantum-like process (Kak, 2013). Quantum theory and an appropriate model have been developed by Conte et al. (2009) to account for interference effects obtained with measurement of ambiguous figures. Quantum theory has also been used for modeling Gestalt perception, as there are apparent similarities between Gestalt perception and quantum theory. In an article discussing the application of Gestalt to chemistry, Anton Amann (1993) writes, “Quantum mechanics does not explain Gestalt perception, of course, but in quantum mechanics and Gestalt psychology there exist almost isomorphic conceptions and problems.”
Through measurement positive care in psychiatry is conquered
Published in Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 2018
In his introduction to gestalt psychology, Köhler [6] considers clinical psychology as a very young science compared to the physical science. When physics only had access to more qualitative and less accurate observations, they were still able, like Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820, to discover the deflection of a magnet in the neighborhood of an electric current [6]. With the subsequent development of the electromagnetic fields, quantitative measurements became possible. We are now two centuries after Ørsted able to perform such quantitative measurements in psychiatry by the clinimetric procedures referred to in this issue of the journal as item response theory models. Thereby, clinical psychiatry has reached the level of physical science when measuring the “mental blood pressure” of our patients. Only through clinimetric measurements, positive care in psychiatry is conquered.