Figure is the object or person that is the focus of the visual field, while the ground is the background. According to this principle, we tend to segment our visual world into figure and ground. One Gestalt principle is the figure-ground relationship. As a result, Gestalt psychology has been extremely influential in the area of sensation and perception (Rock & Palmer, 1990). Gestalt psychologists translated these predictable ways into principles by which we organize sensory information. In other words, the brain creates a perception that is more than simply the sum of available sensory inputs, and it does so in predictable ways.
The word gestalt literally means form or pattern, but its use reflects the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. This belief led to a new movement within the field of psychology known as Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer, and his assistants Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, who later became his partners, believed that perception involved more than simply combining sensory stimuli. In the early part of the 20th century, Max Wertheimer published a paper demonstrating that individuals perceived motion in rapidly flickering static images-an insight that came to him as he used a child’s toy tachistoscope.
