Final answer:
Molly and her friends perceive the incomplete monkey drawing as a whole due to the Gestalt principle known as the Law of closure, where the mind fills in missing parts to complete the image.
Step-by-step explanation:
Molly and her friends are able to perceive the drawing as a whole monkey despite the white-out spill because of the Law of closure.
The Law of closure is a principle from Gestalt psychology that describes how people tend to fill in missing parts of a visual image to perceive a complete object, rather than perceiving it as disjointed parts. This is what allows us to understand incomplete images, like Molly's monkey drawing, as complete forms. We naturally complete the shapes and figures, bridging the gaps based on our memory and expectation of what the object should look like. This psychological phenomenon explains why, even though the arms, ears, and legs of the monkey are detached due to the white-out, Molly and her friends still recognize the figure as a whole monkey; their minds subconsciously fill in the missing connections.