The law of closure is a Gestalt psychology principle holding that people perceive incomplete shapes, letters, pictures or other figures as whole and complete, mentally filling in the missing portions rather than perceiving the figure as fragmented or unfinished. The effect demonstrates that the visual system does not passively register only the sensory information actually present in an image; it actively completes a familiar or expected form using the gaps in the presented figure, producing a perceived whole from a genuinely incomplete stimulus.
Facts
Core ClaimWertheimer 1923 account holds that an arrangement whose parts form a self-enclosed figure is perceived as a bounded whole in preference to an alternative grouping that would leave it open, an effect he called the Factor of Closure. 1 First Described Year Sources
1. Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms (Wertheimer, 1923)
Max Wertheimer, Classics in the History of Psychology (York University), 1923section introducing Figs. 20-22 and the closure demonstrations
From an inspection of Figs. 20-22 we are led to the discovery of still another principle: The Factor of Closure.
publication note beneath the Max Wertheimer (1923) title heading
First published as Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt II, in Psycologische Forschung, 4, 301-350.
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