Gestalt Theory’s Less Known Studies: Memory

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This article is a sequel to “Gestalt Theory: Its Past, its Stranding, and its Future..”. It focuses on what Gestalt theory proposed and produced within the area of memory, which unfortunately are almost unknown. It is typically believed that Gestalt theory is a theory about perception only. This, however, is not true. The aim of this article is to bring to daylight the conceptual and empirical contributions of Gestalt theory within the field of memory. The first part of the article discusses some critical proposals about memory processes in Kurt Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt (1936) book. These involve Koffka’s proposal about the involvement and effects of memory processes in the perception of successive Gestalts; a discussion of the similarities and differences between percepts and memory traces; Koffka’s reference to research suggesting that memory traces are dynamic such that depending on their Prägnanz they will or will not change during storage; that the type of change can even be predicted in some cases. The article will then review one of the most powerful empirical studies on memory within a Gestalt framework, i. e., Hedwig von Restorff’s 1933 dissertation demonstrating how figure-ground effects are at play not only in perception but also in memory. In the final part of this article, I will present Erich Goldmeier’s very original and interesting memory work, which seemed utterly ignored by mainstream cognitive psychology. Keywords: Gestalt theory, figure-ground, Prägnanz & dynamic memory traces, Kurt Koffka, Hedwig von Restorff, Erich Goldmeier