Principles of grouping

The principles of grouping (or Gestalt laws of grouping) are a set of principles in psychology, first proposed by Gestalt psychologists to account for the observation that humans naturally perceive objects as organized patterns and objects, a principle known as Prägnanz. Gestalt psychologists argued that these principles exist because the mind has an innate disposition to perceive patterns in the stimulus based on certain rules. These principles are organized into five categories: Proximity, Similarity, Continuity, Closure, and Connectedness.

Irvin Rock and Steve Palmer, who are acknowledged as having built upon the work of Max Wertheimer and others and to have identified additional grouping principles, note that Wertheimer's laws have come to be called the "Gestalt laws of grouping" but state that "perhaps a more appropriate description" is "principles of grouping."Rock and Palmer helped to further Wertheimer's research to explain human perception of groups of objects and how we perceive parts of objects and form whole objects on the basis of these.

The Gestalt law of proximity states that "objects or shapes that are close to one another appear to form groups". Even if the shapes, sizes, and objects are radically different, they will appear as a group if they are close

• Grouping of this sort can be achieved with: Tone / value Color Shape Size Or other physical attributes

The principle of similarity states that, all else being equal, perception lends itself to seeing stimuli that physically resemble each other as part of the same object, and stimuli that are different as part of a different object. This allows for people to distinguish between adjacent and overlapping objects based on their visual texture and resemblance. Other stimuli that have different features are generally not perceived as part of the object. Our brain uses similarity to distinguish between objects which might lie adjacent to or overlap with each other based upon their visual texture. An example of this is a large area of land used by numerous independent farmers to grow crops. Each farmer may use a unique planting style which distinguishes his field from another. Another example is a field of flowers which differ only by color.

The principles of similarity and proximity often work together to form a Visual Hierarchy. Either principle can dominate the other, depending on the application and combination of the two. For example, in the grid to the left, the similarity principle dominates the proximity principle and you probably see rows before you see columns.

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