One of the simplest instance of relational (or context) effects in perception is that of brightness contrast. Thus, the apparent brightness of a stimulus depends not only on its own luminance but also on that of the surrounding stimulation. The same gray square looks whiter against a dark background and blacker when placed in a bright surround. Similarly, a white or gray patch will take on an apparent hue that is complementary to the colour of the surround (e.g., the patch will seem tinged with yellow when it is placed against a blue background).

Analogous context effects are evident in many commonplace experiences. A man of average height seems to be a runt when he is on a basketball court with much taller players; yet the same man looms like a giant when refereeing a game played by little boys. It is known that a typical winter’s day seems delightfully balmy when temperatures rise after a week of subfreezing weather.

To the Gestaltist, contrast effects dramatize the relational nature of perception. They also play a significant role in a more recently developed adaptation-level theory, which also provides a general perceptual model. At the core of the model is the notion that the manner in which a stimulus is perceived depends not only on its own physical characteristics but also on those of surrounding stimuli and of stimuli previously experienced by the observer. In other words, the perceiver is said to be perceptually adapted to past sensory stimuli; his adaptation level forms a kind of zero point against which any new stimulus is perceived. An example is provided by the almost overwhelming silence one experiences when the sound of an air conditioner (to which he has adapted) suddenly ceases.

Gestalt theorists also attached significance to the observer’s history of stimulation; indeed, some of them interpreted so-called figural aftereffects within a Gestaltist model of brain functioning. Figural aftereffects refer to changes in the perceived shape or location of a figure following its inspection; for example, a curved line will appear to get straighter after prolonged inspection. Or the distance between two parallel lines seems to change as an aftereffect of previous inspection.

In a typical experiment one looks at a point adjacent to a dark vertical bar (the inspection figure) on a screen. Following this inspection period, the dark bar is replaced by two identical pairs of vertical lines, one pair on either side of the region where the bar had been, the second pair alongside in a region not previously exposed to the inspection figure. The subject again fixates the same point. A figural aftereffect shows up as a greater apparent distance between the pair of lines surrounding the region of the inspection figure even though the other pair is actually identical. This distortion is not simply a generalized contrast effect because it occurs only in the small area along the borders of the inspection figure; that is, the effect is localized and restricted.

It thus has been speculated that visual exposure to a figure induces in the brain a condition of localized satiation. The passage of electrical activity is assumed to be impeded in satiated areas of the brain. Moreover, it is postulated that the perceived distance between two borders of a figure is directly related to the time it takes for electrical currents to pass between them. Thus, it is held that one effect of satiation is to increase the apparent distance between the borders of a figure that straddles a satiated region. Whatever the merits of such physiological speculations, they have stimulated a vast amount of research on figural aftereffects. Good evidence for similar effects in other senses, such as touch, also has been obtained. Clearly, perception can be influenced not only by the context of current background but also by the residues (after-effects) of previous stimulation.

Concurrent visual stimulation may modify one’s acuity in detecting auditory stimuli. Similar interactions are claimed to occur for other combinations of senses. Some dentists report success in using audioanalgesia, in which stimulation with sound waves is said to reduce the experience of pain in the mouth. The high specificity of some of the reported sensory interactions seems to preclude an explanation that concurrent stimulation works by changing the subject’s general level of alertness. However these intersensory effects might be mediated, they do suggest that the brain does not function as a collection of entirely independent sensory channels. As a physical system, the brain follows physical principles; thus overlapping and spreading or waning fields of neural excitation in the brain have been theorized to underlie such phenomena as closure and audioanalgesia. Köhler referred to these models of neural analogues of perceptual phenomena as physical Gestalten; unfortunately, there is little direct physiological evidence for them.

An alternative to field effects in brain functioning is the assumption that local stimulation gives rise, in one-to-one fashion, to a mosaic of local responses. Implicit in the mosaic hypothesis is a kind of telephone switchboard model of the brain as a machine in which the electrical activity is strictly confined to separate pathways of neurons that are well insulated (isolated) from one another. The Gestaltists rejected this model because in its early formulations it did not explain intersensory and intrasensory perceptual phenomena. A more sophisticated machine model, however, provides for fieldlike effects through the operation of complex networks of neural elements. It is held that electrical activity remains confined to discrete pathways, but that these pathways do not simply travel straight through the system; that they also interconnect, with both excitatory and inhibitory consequences. Supporting evidence comes from records of the electrical activity in single neurons in the cat brain; when the cat’s eye is probed by a small spot of light, a specific area on the retina can be found that serves to excite a given brain neuron.

Further mapping of the cat retina often uncovers inhibitory areas adjacent to the one that is excitatory; that is, when light strikes those retinal areas the activity in the brain neuron being monitored is depressed. The excitatory and inhibitory areas thus comprise the brain neuron’s retinal receptive field. Analogous inhibitory effects have also been found in research on the eye of the crab, Limulus. Such context effects as brightness contrast could be based on these simple inhibitory mechanisms. It remains to be seen, however, just how many perceptual phenomena that fit Gestalt field theory also can be handled by sophisticated variants of the machine or mosaic model.