ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

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ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

• PERCEPTION AND GESTALT PRINCIPLES

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PERCEPTION AND THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

• Perception is our sensory experience of the world
  around us and involves both the recognition of
  environmental stimuli and actions in response to
  these stimuli.
• Through the perceptual process, we gain
  information about properties and elements of the
  environment that are critical to our survival.
• Perception not only creates our experience of the
  world around us it allows us to act within
  environment.
• The perceptual process is a sequence of steps
  that begins with the environment and leads to our
  perception of a stimulus and an action in
  response to the stimulus.

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PERCEPTION AND THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

• The world is full of stimuli that can attract our
  attention through various senses. The
  environmental stimulus is everything in our
  environment that has the potential to be
  perceived. The attended stimulus is the specific
  object in the environment on which our attention
  is focused.
• The attended stimulus is formed as an image on
  the retina. The image on the retina is then
  transformed into electrical signals in a process
  known as transduction. This allows the visual
  messages to be transmitted to the brain to be
  interpreted. The electrical signals then undergo
  neural processing. The path followed by a
  particular signal depends on what type of signal
  it is (i.e. an auditory signal or a visual
  signal).

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PERCEPTION AND THE PERCEPTUAL PROCESS

• In the next step of the perception process, we
  actually perceive the stimulus object in the
  environment. It is at this point that we become
  consciously aware of the stimulus.
• Perception does not just involve becoming
  consciously aware of the stimuli. It is also
  necessary for our brain to categorise and
  interpret what it is we are sensing.
• Our ability to interpret and give meaning to the
  object is the next step, known as recognition.
  Perception does not tell us about the objects,
  events, or people themselves. Our brains must
  organize and interpret what our sense organs
  perceive, converting environmental stimuli into
  information about the world.
• The final step of the perceptual process involves
  some sort of action in response to the
  environmental stimulus. This could involve a
  variety of actions, such as turning your head for
  a closer look or turning away to look at
  something else.

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OBJECT PERCEPTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION

• There are two approaches of perception research
  which are
• Object Perception
• Environmental Perception
• In object perception research, the emphasis is on
  the
• properties of simple stimuli, such as their
  brightness,
• colour, depth, perceptual constancy, form and
• apparent movement.
• In environmental perception research, the
  emphasis is
• on large-scale scenes, treated as whole
  entities.

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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN OBJECT PERCEPTION AND
ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION

• The differences between the two approaches are as
  follows
• It is not only in the size and complexity of the
  stimulus presented the role of the perceiver is
  also different.
• In the studies of environmental perception, the
  participants usually move around in and through
  the scene they are part of the scene. Moving
  through the environmental display means that the
  perceiver experiences it from multiple
  perspectives.
• The perceiver often is connected to the
  environmental display by a clear goal or purpose.
  For example, while driving, we watch signs and
  lights to avoid being in an accident.

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TYPES OF PURPOSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL PERCEPTION

• Environmental perception has many purposes, but
  an appropriate way to
• divide them is into two
• Utilitarian Purposes
• Aesthetic Purposes
• Most of us actually pay much more attention to
  utilitarian qualities of the environment (e.g.
  businesses) than to the aesthetic qualities of
  the environment.

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AWARENESS AND ADAPTATION

• The environment is full of information, we select
  a small and manageable portion of the
  environmental information for our attention.
• We may focus intensely or minimally on
  environmental displays ranging in
• size (from architectural details to panoramic
  landscapes)
• distance (from very near to very distant)
• We may actively search the environment (when we
  evaluate an apartment as a possible place to
  rent) or we may unaware of our surroundings (when
  we are daydreaming, reading).

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AWARENESS AND ADAPTATION

• We may adapt or habituate to some environmental
  displays so that we really do not see them at all
  (a street we drive along everyday) or we may
  interested on something because of its importance
  (first look at the campus)
• Another example of habituation is the way we
  adapt to the perception of air pollution. We
  notice it when it is new to us.
• Our perception is not always directed toward
  physical settings it is usually directed toward
  other people or ourselves. We sometimes pay very
  little attention to our physical environment.
• Even when it causes us some discomfort, this lack
  of awareness is called environmental numbness.

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• Our perception is not always directed toward
  physical settings it is usually directed toward
  other people or ourselves. We sometimes pay
  little attention to the physical env.
• Even when it causes some discomfort, this lack of
  awareness is called Environmental Numbness.

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Influences on Environmental Perception

• Personal Influences Characteristics of the
  observer such as perceptual ability (impaired
  seeing, hearing), sex, education, training,
  profession, experience with a setting, whether a
  person likes the setting or not.
• Cultural Influences The cultural context in
  which the observer was raised.
• Physical Influences The characteristic of the
  scene being perceived such as architectural
  features of a room make it look enclosed, color
  and architectural perception.

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• The path and room size distortions may affect
  perception of crowding, status, confinement, etc.
• When pedestrians are subject to more traffic
  noise, their perceptual field narrows. They look
  straight ahead more and miss information on their
  path.

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Affordances

• James Gibson introduced the term affordance in
  1977. It is an important theory in environmental
  perception.
• An affordance is the quality of an object or an
  environment that allows an individual to perform
  an action.
• It is the potential to provide something

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• Gibsons definition describes all action
  possibilities that are physically possible.
• Affordances are
• objectively measurable
• independent of an individuals ability to
  recognize them
• Always in relation to the actor (individual)
• Dependent on the actors capabilities

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Affordances

• In 1988 Donald Norman appropriated affordances to
  refer to just those action possibilities which
  are readily perceivable by an actor.
• This definition is relational rather than
  subjective or opbjective.

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• Normans definition of affordances suggest how an
  object may be interracted with. This makes the
  concept dependent not only on the physical
  capabilities of the actors, but also on their
  goals, plans, values, beliefs and past experience.

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• Certain arrangements of cues give the perceiver
  direct, immediate perceptions of the environment.
  
• The world is composed of substances (eg. Clay,
  steel, glass) and surfaces (eg. Floors, walls,
  ceilings)

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• The arrangements of substances and surfaces
  (called layouts) provide affordances, or
  instantly detectable functions.
• Gibson argues that architects should not be
  taught to see form and shape, users do not see
  forms and shape when they see a place, rather
  they perceive affordanceswhat the place can do
  for them.

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GESTALT THEORY

• Perception is one of the oldest fields within
  scientific psychology, and there are
  correspondingly many theories about its
  underlying processes.
• The oldest quantitative law in psychology is the
  Weber-Fechner Law, which quantifies the
  relationship between the intensity of physical
  stimuli and their perceptual effects. It was the
  study of perception that gave rise to the Gestalt
  School of Psychology, with its emphasis on
  holistic approach.
• To the Gestaltists, things are affected by where
  they are and by what surrounds them, so that
  things are better described as more than the sum
  of their parts. In other words, the unified
  whole is different from the sum of the parts,
  which simply sums up Gestalt Theory.

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GESTALT THEORY

• The essence of Gestalt Theory is that people
  perceive objects as wholes. For example, when we
  see a triangle, we view it not as three lines and
  three angles, but as one thing, a triangle.
• The whole can not be seen by looking at the
  individual elements.

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• Gestalt is a general description for the concepts
  that make unity and variety possible in design.
• The study of Gestalt originated in Germany in the
  1920s. It is a German word that roughly
  translates as whole or form. The aspects of
  Gestalt theory that interests designers are
  related to gestalts investigations of visual
  perception, the relationship between the parts
  and the whole of visual experience.
• The visual world is so complex that the mind has
  developed strategies for copying with the
  confusion. The mind tries to find the simplest
  solution to a problem. One of the way it does
  this is to form groups of items that have certain
  characteristics in common.
• Gestalt is concerned with how these groups are
  formed and what effect they have on perception.
  The stronger the grouping, the stronger the
  gestalt.

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• It is this grouping that contributes to the unity
  in a design. Gestalt is one of the most powerful
  tools available to a designer for creating unity.
• The same concepts that form groups can be
  reversed to ungroup items to make them look
  unique and stand alone. That is the basis of
  creating variety. Variety is what adds interest
  to an image or a design.
• Understanding Gestalt principles can help
  designer to control unity and variety, and of
  course other design principles.
• Gestalt Principles
• Figure and Ground
• Similarity, Proximity or Contiguity, Continuity
  (generated by Laws of Prägnanz)
• Closure, Area, Similarity

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• FIGURE AND GROUND
• The term figure and ground explain how we use
  elements of the scene which are similar in
  appearance and shape and group them together as a
  whole. Similar elements (figure) are constructed
  with dissimilar elements (ground) to give
  impression of a whole.
• Horses, M.C. Escher

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• A figure is something object-like that is
  perceived as being in the foreground. The ground
  is whatever lies behind the figure. The
  perception of figure as opposed to ground can be
  thought of as the fundamental perceptual act of
  identifying objects.

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• Human cognition arranges surfaces in forms which
  are recognized as the actual figure, and in forms
  which are recognized as background to the figure.
  In some geometrical arrangements the relation
  between figure and background isn't clear. In
  that case we see one part of the image as figure
  and the other part as background, until they
  change.

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• The Dutch graphic artist, M.C. Escher used figure
  and ground arguably as his main compositional
  ideas.

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• Escher's art can not only be understood in these
  terms, it can actually be made by going back and
  forth between figure and ground, changing each
  one a small amount in succession.

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• As a compositional idea, figure and ground trades
  on ambiguity it invites us to pause, look again
  and see the design in different terms.

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• Some Examples of Figure and Ground

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• SIMILARITY (benzerlik)
• The principle of similarity states that things
  which share visual characteristics such as shape,
  size, colour, texture, value or orientation will
  be seen as belonging together or grouped.
• Similarity is concerned with what items look
  like.

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• PROXIMITY (yakinlik) OR CONTIGUITY (bitisiklik)
• The principle of proximity or contiguity states
  that things which are closer together will be
  seen as belonging together or a coherent object.
• As objects become closer they are seen as more
  unified. Proximity explains why broken or dashed
  lines and separate shapes can be interpreted as
  line.

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Proximity

• An easy way to gain unity is by proximity simply
  putting the elements close together. Spatial
  proximity is a powerful perceptual organizing
  principle and one of the most useful in design.
  Things that close together are perceptually
  grouped together.
• Proximity unifies by closeness. Through proximity
  we recognize constellations in the skies and, in
  fact, are able to read. Change the proximity
  scheme that make letters into words and reading
  becomes next to impossible.
• HA VEA GO ODD AY!

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• CONTINUITY (süreklilik, devamlilik)
• The principle of continuity predicts the
  preference for continuous figures.
• People tend to interpret line and contours
  whenever the visual elements of an image
  establish a direction. This explains movement in
  an image, since the eye continues in the
  direction that has been established. The viewer
  follows a larger uninterrupted form composed of
  smaller separate forms.
• Good Continuation

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Continuity

• The Gestalt principle of continuity states that
  we are more likely to construct visual entities
  out of visual elements that are smooth and
  continuous, rather than ones that contain abrupt
  changes in direction (Ware 2004). Continuation,
  naturally, means that something "continues" -
  usually a line, an edge, or a direction from one
  form to another. The viewer's eye is carried
  smoothly from one element to the next.

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In the picture, the edge of the sleeping girl's
head and her outstretched arm connect to the
curving line of the sofa, forming one line of
continuity in the painting "the living room".
Other subtle lines of continuation visually unite
the many shapes and colors of what might
otherwise be a chaotic composition.
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In some cases continuity is a driving force in
design. The roof over the courtyard of the
British Museum by Foster and Partners is a case
in point. The roof is a membrane of glass and
steel, a triangular lattice of struts with glass
panels filling each triangle. There is an
infinite number of designs for such a roof, but
the designers deliberately sought to make all
struts appear to align into continuous curves.
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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• Some Examples of Continuity and Similarity
  togetherness

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• CLOSURE (kapama)
• The principle of closure applies when we tend to
  see complete figures even when part of the
  information is missing. An object is really a
  group of simple items that the mind puts together
  as a single entity.
• Closure occurs when an object is incomplete or a
  space is not completely enclosed.

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GESTALT PRINCIPLES OF PERCEPTION

• AREA
• The principle of area states that the smaller of
  two overlapping figures is perceived as figure
  while the larger is regarded as ground.
• SYMMETRY
• The principle of symmetry describes the instance
  where the whole of a figure is perceived rather
  than the individual parts which make up the
  figure.