For this week’s passion blog, I wanted to focus on the developmental aspect of psychology. In 1959, psychologists Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk wanted to find out more about depth perception. Specifically, they wanted to test if infants are naturally born with depth perception or whether it’s a learned behavior. In order to carry this experiment out, Gibson and Walk conducted what is known as The Visual Cliff Experiment at Cornell University. 

To start the experiment, approximately 36 infants aged between 6 and 14 months were chosen to participate.  Each infant was placed on one end of a platform while their parent or guardian awaits at the other end of the cliff illusion. Two possible assumptions were made about depth perception in babies regarding this experiment. First, if an infant has developed depth perception, they will hesitate or refuse to crawl to their parent or guardian. However, babies who still lacked depth perception would happily crawl to their parent or guardian since they can’t see the cliff.

It was concluded by the psychologists that the ability to visualize depth must begin around the time infants start to crawl. I could understand why they would make this assumption. It only makes sense because depth perception almost seems like it plays a role in survival. Instead, it was learned that overtime as babies experience bumps, scrapes, and falls from heights for example causes fear.

So much more knowledge was gained from this one experiment and several studies were later conducted. Adding to that, a study conducted in 2013 assumed that younger children didn’t yet develop depth perception while the older children developed it. 6 and 10 month old babies proved this assumption. This study revealed the 6 month olds crawled their way through the visual edge while the 10 month old babies refused to cross. An even later experiment was done in 2014. This time, researchers found out that children as early as 3 months could see the visual cliff. This was observed after the children were placed over the edge. Immediately the 3 month year old responses showed increased heart rates, increased breathing rates, and widened eyes. Regardless of the year and information gathered, one question still remained unclear. Why are children willing to crawl off the cliff if they can sense and perceive depth. It was learned that younger children fail to realize the consequences of crossing the visual cliff. Young infants do not realize that falling is the outcome of crawling across the cliff when trying to reach their parent or guardian. Overtime, this is something that is learned when the child goes through enough experience to understand consequences. 

sources:

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-visual-cliff-2796010

Visual Cliff Experiment (Gibson & Walk, 1960)