"'The whole is other than the sum of the parts." - Kurt Koffka 

Koffka (1935) presented the law of Prägnanz as the main principle to guide research on perceptual organization. This law states that psychological organization will always be as “good” as the prevailing conditions allow: we will always organize our visual input in the best way possible.

However, what does it mean for a psychological organization to be “good” or “prägnant”, and what are the prevailing conditions to take into account? Notwithstanding the abundant reference to Prägnanz in many journal article introductions and discussion sections since its emergence, the concept has remained very vaguely defined. In addition, the original Gestalt psychological context in which Prägnanz originated got lost, and the interpretation of Prägnanz has changed together with the shifting theoretical context (i.e., increasing focus on information processing theories).

What does Prägnanz mean, and why should we care? In this talk, Eline Van Geert will review different aspects of the Prägnanz concept, and motivate why pursuing a clearer and more nuanced definition of Prägnanz is relevant for perception science, even – or especially – today. In addition, she will highlight the close historical connections of Prägnanz to the understanding of human aesthetic appreciation.

Eline Van Geert is a doctoral student working at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, KU Leuven, under the supervision of Prof. Johan Wagemans. She is supported by a PhD fellowship of the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). Her research interests include visual aesthetics, perceptual organization, individual differences in perception, and Bayesian statistics. Central to Eline's PhD research is the question of why we perceptually organize the visual input we receive in the way we do. She focuses on the concept of Prägnanz (i.e., simplicity of overall organization) in visual perception, which includes refining the definition, developing a measure, and investigating the factors influencing Prägnanz as well as its influence on processes following perception. Her PhD, titled "Prägnanz in visual perception: Towards better theories, measures, and tests of good Gestalts", is to be completed in 2022. Find out more about Eline’s work on her personal website or Twitter page.

We thank the NSSR Dean's Office for their support of this series of events. For a list of upcoming speakers and discussions, please see the schedule.

Registered attendees will receive the Zoom link via email.