GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY

 Was at the forefront of the cognitive

psychology.
 It served as the foundation of the cognitive
perspective to learning.
 It opposed the external and mechanistic
focus of behaviorism.
 It considered the mental processes and
products or perception.
COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE
Kohler’s Insight Theory
Gestalt Law
 These are just some illustrations that “challenge”
our perceptual skills.
 What was your experience in figuring the
pictures?
 What helped you perceived the interesting
pictures?
 How did you go about examining the pictures?
 Your mind followed certain principles of
perception.
 Gestalt psychology is concerned with such
principles.
 GESTALT Theory – was the initial cognitive
response to behaviorism.
 It emphasized the importance of sensory
wholes and the dynamic nature of visual
perception.
 The term Gestalt means “form” or
“configuration”.
 The word Gestalt – a German word which
means Configuration or Pattern

 Usually translated as form – an organized

structure
 VISUAL PERCEPTION ---- PROBLEM
SOLVING

 To see is ….. To think

 According to Gestalt Approach

 Emphasizes that we perceive objects as well-
organized patterns rather than separate
component parts
 When we open our eyes we don’t see fractional
particles in disorder, instead, we notice larger
areas with define shapes and patterns
 Max Wertheimer
 Wolfgang Kohler
 Kurt Koffka
 They studied perception and concluded that
perceivers (or learners) were not passive, but
rather active.
 They suggested that learners do not just
collect information as is but they actively
process and restructure data in order to
understand it.
 This is the perceptual process
  According to Gestalt psychology the whole is
different than the sum of its parts.
 Developed a set of principles to explain
perceptual, or how smaller objects are grouped to
form larger ones.
 According to the Gestalt psychologists, the
way we form our perceptions are guided
by certain principles or laws.
 These principles or laws determine what
we see or make of things or situations we
meet.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF PROXIMITY
 Elements that are
closer together will be
perceived as a
coherent object
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF SIMILARITY
 Elements that look
similar will be
perceived as part of
the same form.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF CLOSURE
 We tend to fill the gaps
or “close” the figures
we perceive.
 We enclose a space
by completing a
contour and ignoring
gaps in the figure.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF GOOD
CONTINUATION
 Individuals have the
tendency to continue
contours whenever the
elements of the
pattern establish an
implied direction.
 People tend to draw a
good of continuous
line.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF GOOD
PRAGNANZ
 The stimulus will be
organized into as good
figure as possible.
 We expect certain
patterns and therefore
perceive that expected
pattern.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES
 LAW OF
FIGURE/GROUND
 We tend to pay
attention and perceive
things in the
foreground first.
 A stimulus will be
perceived as separate
from its ground.
 FIGURE AND BACKGROUND
 Not only does perception involve organization and
grouping, it also involves distinguishing an object
from its surrounding.
 The area around that object becomes the
background
 Drawings in which the figure and ground can be
reversed- to illustrate their point that the whole is
different from the sum of its parts
 We are trying to shift attention, appearing without
conscious effort.
 Seeing one aspect apparently excludes seeing the
other.
 Sometimes people are rarely confused about what
they see.
 INSIGHT LEARNING
 Gestalt psychology adheres to the idea of
learning taking place by discovery or
insight.
 The idea of insight learning was first
developed by Wolfgang Kohler in which he
described experiments with apes where
the apes could use boxes and sticks as
tools to solve problems.
 In each of these problems, the important
aspect of learning was not reinforcement,
but the coordination of thinking to create
new organizations (of materials).
 Kohler referred to this behavior as insight
or discovery learning.
 Kohler proposed the view that insight
follows from the characteristics of objects
under consideration.
 His theory suggested that learning could
occur when the individual perceives the
relationships of the elements before him
and reorganizes these elements and comes
to a greater understanding or insight.
 This could occur without reinforcement,
and once it occurs, no review, training, or
investigation necessary.
 Significantly, insight is not necessarily
observable by another person.
 GESTALT PRINCIPLES AND THE
TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS

 The six gestalt principles not only

influence perception but they also impact
on learning.
 Kurt Lewin, expounded on gestalt
psychology.
 His theory focusing on “life space adhered
to gestalt psychology.
 He said that an individual has inner and
outer forces that affect his perceptions and
also his learning.
 Inner forces include his own motivation,
attitudes and feelings.
 Outer forces may include the attitude and
behavior of the teacher and classmates.
 All these forces interact and impact on the
person’s learning.
 Mario Polito, an Italian
psychologist writes about
the relevance of gestalt
psychology to education.
 “Gestalt theory is focused on the
experience of contact that occurs in the
here and now. It considers with interest the
life space of teachers as well as students. It
takes interest in the complexity of
experience, without neglecting anything,
but accepting and amplifying all the
emerges. It stimulates learning as
experience and the experience as a source
of learning. It appreciates the affections
and meaning that we attribute to what we
learn.
 Cont.
 Knowledge is conceived as a continuous
organization and rearrangement of
information according to needs, purposes
and meanings. It asserts that learning is not
accumulation, but remodelling or insight.
Autonomy and freedom of the student is
stimulated by the teacher. The time
necessary for assimilation and for cognitive
and existential remodelling is respected. The
contact experience between teachers and
students is given value:
 “an authentic meeting based on sharing
ideas and affections.”
Activity:
 Identify the gestalt principle applied in each
of the following learning activities. Discuss
your answer with a learning
group(composed of five members)
 1. The teacher relates a new topic with
something the student already knows.
 2. Topics with commonalities are taught
next to each other.
 3. The most important words in the
paragraph are written in bolder fonts.
 4. The teacher slows down her pace and
varies her tone of voice to emphasize a
point.
 5. Teachers remind children to keep their
numbers in straight columns when doing
math operations.
 INFORMATION
PROCESSING THEORY
INFORMATION PROCESSING
 Is a cognitive theoretical framework that
focuses on how knowledge enters and is
stored and retrieved from our memory.
 It was one of the most significant cognitive
theories in the last century and it has
strong implications on the teaching-
learning process.
Relate how the mind and the
computer work.
 Cognitive psychologists believed that
cognitive processes influenced the nature
of what is learned.
 They considered learning as largely an
internal process, not an external behavior
change.
 They looked into how we receive, perceive,
store and retrieve information.
 They believed that how a person thinks
about and interprets what s/he receives
shapes what he/she will learn.
 IPT describes how the learner receives
information (stimuli) from the environment
through the senses and what takes place
in between determines whether the
information will continue to pass through
the sensory register, then the short term
memory and the long term memory.
 Certain factors would also determine
whether the information will be retrieved or
“remembered” when the learner needs it.
TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
 General vs Specific:
 This involves whether the knowledge useful in many
tasks, or only in one.
 Declarative:
 This refers to factual knowledge.
 They relate to the nature of how things are.
 They may be in the form of a word or an image.
 Examples: name, address, nursery rhyme, definition
or face of your crush
 Procedural:
 This includes knowledge on how to do things.
 Example: making a lesson plan, baking cake
etc.
 Episodic:
 This includes memories of life events, like
your high school graduation.
 Conditional:
 This is about “knowing when and why” to
apply declarative or procedural strategies.
STAGES OF IPT
 Involves:
 Functioning of the senses
 Sensory register
 Short term memory
 Long term memory
 Basically, IPT asserts three primary
stages in the progression of external
information becoming incorporated into
the internal cognitive structure of choice
(schema, concept, script, frame, mental
model, etc)
Three Primary stages in IPT
 Encoding
 Information is sensed, perceived, and
attended to.
 Storage
 The information is stored for either a brief or
extended period of time, depending upon the
processes following encoding
 Retrieval
 Information brought back at the appropriate
time, and reactivated for use on a current
task, the true measure of effective memory.
Sensory Register
 The first step in the IP model, holds all sensory
information for a very brief time.
 Capacity: Our mind receives a great amount of
information but it is more than what our minds can
hold or perceive.
 Duration: hold 1 to 3 seconds
 There is a difference in duration based on
modality: auditory memory is more persistent than
visual.
The Role of Attention
 To bring information into consciousness, it
is necessary that we give attention to it.
 Getting through this attentional filter is
done when the learner is interested in the
material.
 Before information is perceive, it is known
as “precategorical” information.
 This means that until that point, the learner has not established
a determination of the categorical membership of the
information.
Short Term Memory
 Capacity: can only hold 5 to 9 “chunks” of
information.
 Also called working memory
 Maintain information for a limited time,
until the learner has adequate resources
to process the information, or until the
information is forgotten.
 Duration: Around 18 seconds or less
 Maintenance rehearsal: using repetition to
keep the information active in STM.
Long Term Memory
 The final or permanent storing house for
memory information.
 It holds the stored information until needed
again.
 Capacity: LTM has unlimited capacity.
 Duration: Duration in the LTM is indefinite.
Executive Control Processes
 Involve the executive processor or what is
referred to as metacognitive skills.
 These processes guide the flow of
information through the system, helps the
learner make informed decisions about
how to categorize, organize, or interpret
information.
 Example of processes: attention,
rehearsals and organization.
Forgetting
 Is the inability to retrieve or access
information when needed.
 2 main ways:
 1. Decay – information is not attended to,
and eventually ‘fades’ away.
 2. Interference – new or old information
‘blocks’ access to the information in
question.
Methods for Increasing Retrieval
of Information
 Rehearsal – repeating information verbatim,
either mentally or aloud.
 Meaningful Learning – making connection
between new information and prior
knowledge.
 Organization – making connection among
various pieces of information.
 Info that is organized efficiently should be
recalled.
 Elaboration – adding ideas to new info based
on what one already knows.
 It is connecting new info with old, to gain meaning.
 Visual Imagery – means forming a “picture” of
the info.
 Generation – things we ‘produce’ are easier
to remember than things we ‘hear’
 Context – remembering the situation helps
recover info.
 Personalization – making the info relevant to
the individual.
 Other Memory Methods
 Serial Position Effect (recency and primacy)
– will remember the beginning and end of
‘list’ most readily
 Part Learning – break up the ‘list’ of “chunk”
info to increase memorization
 Distributed Practice – break up learning
sessions
 Mnemonic Aids – memory techniques that
learners may employ