ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by proximity

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exploited by annoying little brothers on long car trips everywhere. [Young brother annoying sister on car trip]

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Alright, here's today's question Jen sees the legs of the chair the seat and the

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putrid mauve color of the cushion she realizes it is a chair this is an

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example of what and here are your potential answers.

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alright putrid mauve, where Jen go to find this chair the 1970s alright so [Woman balancing chair in her mouth]

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this question is asking us to identify Jen's thought process about this gross

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chair so let's jump right in is this an example of D) Gestalt rules well Gestalt

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rules are also known as the principles of grouping a set of

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principles in psychology that suggests that humans naturally perceive objects [Balloons, presents and peppers]

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as organized patterns these principles are organized into six categories

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similarity we see things that are similar as part of the same group

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closure the mind tendency to complete figures even if they aren't actually [Person completing jigsaw]

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complete continuity if objects intersect we can perceive the separate object as

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uninterrupted. Common fate - if things are moving together we typically group them together

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Good form - our ability to identify common shared attributes like form pattern or color in [monkey playing with different shapes]

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order to group objects together and finally proximity objects that are

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closer together are often grouped together and also answer E) Ok so let's catch our [Man wipes sweat from forehead]

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breath and we're back because all this refers to grouping and not at all the

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singular object perception so we can lose D) and E) right away hey group wrong

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answers how appropriate alright it's Jens thought process and example of C)

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figure ground processing, well figure ground processing is the ability to

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identify a figure from the background this could mean identifying a bird in [Boy points to bird in the sky]

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the sky words on a page or trying to figure out this super famous optical

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illustration by Edgar Ruben you know the one you'd see their two faces or a vase

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depending on how you look at it well personally we think it looks like a [Optical image of two faces with a vase in the middle]

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goblet but that's not even one of the options so thanks Ruben, anyway seeing

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this question doesn't refer to the ability to distinguish the chair from a

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background this doesn't fit either, so you can cross

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out C) so that leaves us with top-down processing and bottom-up processing well

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top-down processing is when we take our expectations and knowledge to help us

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interpret sensory stimuli let's say Jen just spent an afternoon listening to her [Jen laid on grass listening to music]

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favorite song on repeat and her favorite song just happens to be about the

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one-eyed one-horned flying purple people eater well if she were to walk into a [Purple people eater appears]

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room shortly thereafter only to find a mauve chair lurking in the shadows

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top-down processing might cause her to assume the sofa was in fact a hungry [Chair attempts to eat woman]

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hungry monster bottom-up processing on the other hand refers to the ability to

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pick up features of stimuli in our world and piece them together to make

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sense of them you know like seeing the legs and seat of the chair and

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rationally coming to the conclusion then it's just an ugly fuzzy chair and if [An ugly chair appears]

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that' sounds familiar good thinking is exactly what the question describes so B)

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is our answer so honestly you don't need to listen to classic Halloween songs to

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be scared of this putrid mauve monstrosity [Putrid mauve chair appears in a room]

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