forced completion

Suppose a new pattern emerges from an old one when in perceiving the new we decompose it into an incomplete old pattern completed in a new way. My thought experiment involves seeing a dumbbell shape as a violation of the circle - a forced completion of the circle creating the new pattern.

This should result in storing the dumbbell shape nearby the circle shape, either as a subtopic or as a brother topic to the circle in a more general category.

But, as David Levy reminds me, if there is no value attached to identifying a new pattern, it will not become learned. For example, I got lazy above and drew something that was not a dumbbell, in order to make my point. In fact it looks like a couple of bubbles inadvertently glued together - a different forced completion than the one I was trying to illustrate. In that case, we either ignore identifying a new pattern or we start duplicating the original circle.