Question

3. Gestalt psychology and point light walkers
What would a Gestalt psychologist have to say about the point light walkers and the perception of depth, or 3D structure. Make references to specific Gestalt principles and explain why they apply in this case.

Answer 1

First of all let us understand what Gestalt Psychology and point light walkers and perception of depth or 3D structure are all about.

Gestalt Psychology is a school of Pyschology that emphasizes that living organisms perceive patterns or configurations in an entirety and not as individual components.

Point light walkers is a biological motion perception that perceives a fluid like motion of an agent. Here point light walkers are a coordinated moving dots that simulate a biological motion in which each of the dots represent specific joints of a human being performing an action.

Now coming back to the question, Gestalt Pyschology would say that organisms would perceive point light walkers as a whole even though only points of moving joints of humans are depicted or simulated. So, as per Gestalt Psychology, we would feel like a human being in its entirety is walking and not individual individual joints or points in the case of point light walkers.

Similarly perception of depth or 3D perception is actually the ability of our vision to perceive the world in the form of 3D or three dimensions and the distance of an object. We can perceive 3D images due to our binocular cues( this is a depth perception that involves the degree to which our eyes come together or converge to track an object). This is very similar to Gestalt Psychology principles of perceiving things in entirety. So, we perceive 3D images as we see the images in it's entirety and not individual components. So had we perceived just individual elements of a 3D picture we could not have understood the picture as a whole or entirety which is why Gestalt Psychology comes handy as it helps us to perceive 3D images in their entirety.