THE DISCONTINUOUS CONTINUITY: A NEW PRINCIPLE OF PERCEPTUAL GROUPING AND PART-WHOLE ORGANIZATION

摘要

Wertheimer (1923) in his pioneering study introduced the problem of grouping. The question he answered was: How do individual elements create larger (Gestalt) wholes separated from others? In a set of classical experiments, he discovered several grouping principles. The aim of this work is: (i) to introduce a new principle, called 'Discontinuous Continuity', based on conditions not considered by Gestalt psychologists, i.e. discontinuities within the same continuous edge; (ii) to demonstrate, through phenomenological and psychophysical experiments, the independence of this new principle from the known Gestalt ones; (iii) to introduce a new kind of perceptual part-whole organization, derived from the new principle, according to which discontinuous components are not only ungrouped (as the grouping principles can solely state) but assume the role of phenomenal 'parts' of an amodally homogeneous 'whole', that is the role assumed by the complementary continuous components.