What is Figure Ground




What is Figure Ground

In the perceptual field certain factors are considered significant and give meaning to the person, and certain others which could be either unimportant for a person or cannot be studied, are left as insignificant. The meaningful and significant potion is called the 'figure' and the insignificant our attention to the Fig3.1

Example of Figure Ground.

This is the famous cup-faces illustration. If you concentrate on black portion you notice a white cup. On the other hand if you concentrate on white portion you get two individuals facing each other. The information we classify as figure is assigned more importance than that subsequent interpretation of information will be affected by whether he classified the information as 'figure' and 'ground'. What becomes ground or what becomes figure is largely influenced by our needs and expectations. For instance, when we enter a dark movie theatre, we do not immediately consider what is going on the screen, we rather focus on the seat. Here the seat becomes the 'figure' and movie becomes 'ground'. It is important for us to know that every event would have the 'figure' as well as 'ground'. But we only take the 'figure' into cognizance and act on it. We should be fully aware of this fact. Once find a seat, the seat becomes ground and movie switches from ground to figure.