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Gestalt: common region 0:30
A 30-second explainer of Gestalt: common region, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Gestalt: common region demo
What this video covers
Common region is the grouping effect where elements within the same bounded space - such as a panel or tinted background - are perceived as a group, even if other items are closer. It’s one of the strongest grouping cues and typically overrides proximity and similarity. (Grouping via an explicit connector - such as a line joining items - is a related but distinct cue, uniform connectedness.)
The dots never moved, but the moment a box was drawn around a pair, they became a unit - and the neighbour just outside the line, no further away than before, was suddenly an outsider. Enclosure quietly overrules plain distance.