New conditions on the role of color in perceptual organization and an extension to how color influences reading
New conditions on the role of color in perceptual organization and an extension to how color influences reading

Summary/Abstract: Color is one among many attributes that are involved in the similarity principle. Grouping by color is believed to be less effective when compared with other attributes such as shape and luminance. The main purpose of this work is to explore the role played by color in determining visual grouping and wholeness, not only in relation to further similarity attributes but also to other principles such as proximity, good continuation and past experience. Conditions, different from those used by Gestalt psychologists, were chosen, and aimed to understand how color can influence visual organization and through it, other perceptual and complex processes such as reading and visual word recognition. In fact, involving cognitive and metacognitive domains, permits exploration of broader issues concerning perception, memory, knowledge, representation and learning, where color can express its biological advantages for humans more clearly. These processes can be assimilated to the Gestalt past experience considered as a principle of its own kind not fully explored in relation to the other principles. As a consequence, these conditions allow color to be pitted against past experience and against a number of principles at the same time. The results demonstrated that color can strongly influence grouping, shape and the process of segmentation of words involved in the reading task. Therefore, color not only is one among the many principles of grouping but an essential component for the foundation of the more complex organization aimed at creating wholeness, part-whole formation and fragmentation.

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