gestalt
gestalt is a item that is more than the sum of its parts. We don’t see letters, we see words, and thus the words are a gestalt that is more than the letters that compose it
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3482144/
a subcategory of perception HCI research.
History
Gestalt psychology was first formulated in the early 1900s with Wertheimer’s “phi motion”, an illusory motion created without an actual moving object. In other words, the grouped, abstract perception of motion does not require parts (individual objects).
Similarly, von Ehrenfels found that melodies were seen as “the same” as other melodies, despite no individual notes being the same.
Gestalt psychology took a big hit as one of the pillars of it (electrical field analysis of the brain to understand how things lit up) was found to be faulty by Lashley, Chow, and Semmes and later Sperry, Miner, and Myers
