ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of some fundamental issues in perceptual organization. The Gestalt psychologists hypothesized that perceptual experience stood in an isomorphic relationship with brain processes. The role of the phenomenologist in guiding the research of the experimental psychologist is comparable to the role of the experimental psychologist in guiding the research of the physiological psychologist: Their relationship should be thought of not as antagonistic but rather as complementary. In order to explain "curious interactions in perceptual fields," the Gestalt psychologists postulated a physiological model in which perceived form corresponded to the shape of electrical fields in the brain. Perceptual organization also includes the representation of relationships among the various objects in the perceptual world, including spatial relationships such as support, occlusion, and the like in the visual modality and analogous relationships in the other modalities. An important aspect of perceptual organization is the processing of relational information from the sensory input.
