Walter H. Ehrenstein

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Walter Hermann Ehrenstein (born April 9, 1950 in Heidelberg ; † January 30, 2009 in Bonn ) was a German psychologist and Gestalt theorist . Like his father Walter Ludwig Ehrenstein (1899–1961), he mainly researched in the field of perceptual psychology .

Life

Ehrenstein studied ethology, physiology and psychology at the Universities of Giessen and Göttingen . In 1977 he did his doctorate under Otto D. Creutzfeld at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen on the subject of direction-specific aftereffects in acoustic movement perception . This was followed by a research fellowship with Robert Galambosan, Neuroscience Department of the University of California in San Diego, USA, from 1977 to 1978, and then worked as a research assistant from 1978 to 1980 at the University of Konstanz .

From 1980 to 1985 Ehrenstein worked at the Laboratory for Neuropsychology in Freiburg with Lothar Spillmann , with whom he remained lifelong and with whom he published numerous scientific papers. From 1985 he worked at the “ Leibniz Institute for Work Research at the TU Dortmund ” (at that time still “Institute for Work Physiology”, IfADo). His areas of work there were psychophysics (neurosciences, basics and ergonomic applications), perception (visual, auditory, intersensory) including sensorimotor coordination, gestalt psychology and epistemology.

Due to his special qualifications in the field of Gestalt psychology and Gestalt theory, he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the international multidisciplinary journal Gestalt Theory in 2007 . In 2008 he was the guest editor of a special issue on shape-theoretical perception research in Japan for this journal, and since his stay as a visiting scientist in 1992 at the Kyoto Institute of Technology, he has maintained close relationships with the most famous researchers . Since 2008, Ehrenstein has also worked on the editorial board of the Journal of Integrated Social Sciences (JISS) for the field of "Psychology".

selected Writings

  • 1984: Directional adaptation of spatial and movement hearing, in Spillmann, L. & Wooten, BR (eds.) (1984): Sensory Experience, Adaptation and Perception. Festschrift for Ivo Kohler , 401–419. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  • 1996 (with L. Spillmann): From Neuron to Gestalt - Mechanisms of Visual Perception, in Greger, R. & Windhorst, U. (eds.) (1996): Comprehensive Human Physiology , 861-893. Heidelberg: Springer.
  • 2003 (with L. Spillmann & V. Sarris): Gestalt issues in modern neuroscience. Axiomathes 13 : 433-458.
  • 2008 (as guest editor and co-author): Perceptual research in Japan. Special Issue by Gestalt Theory, 30 (1).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Data on life and work are mainly taken from the obituaries mentioned under "Literature".
personal data
SURNAME Ehrenstein, Walter H.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ehrenstein, Walter Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Gestalt psychologist and perception researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Heidelberg
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 2009
Place of death Bonn