Gestaltzerfall

Gestaltzerfall (German for "shape decomposition" or Gestalt decomposition) is a type of visual agnosia and is a psychological phenomenon where delays in recognition are observed when a complex shape is stared at for a while as the shape seems to decompose into its constituent parts. In plain terms, if a subject reads or hears the same term over and over, that term ceases to have any meaning. With regard to kanji, one study found that after prolonged viewing of one character, recognition of a subsequent one is delayed most when the two are the same size. When the subsequent character is a diffe