What Is the Visual Cliff Experiment?What Is the Purpose of the Visual Cliff Experiment?Who Conducted the Visual Cliff Experiment?How Did the Visual Cliff Experiment Work?The Visual Cliff in Animals vs. BabiesVisual Cliff Experiment ResultsAre The Visual Cliff Experiment Results Still Relevant?Visual Cliff Experiment Conclusion

What Is the Visual Cliff Experiment?

What Is the Purpose of the Visual Cliff Experiment?

Who Conducted the Visual Cliff Experiment?

How Did the Visual Cliff Experiment Work?

The Visual Cliff in Animals vs. Babies

Visual Cliff Experiment Results

Are The Visual Cliff Experiment Results Still Relevant?

Visual Cliff Experiment Conclusion

The 1960 Visual Cliff experiment is the most famous look at how depth perception develops. The visual cliff experiment is a great look into how the fear of heights develops and how psychologists used different forms of research to observe that development.

The researchers behind this experiment wanted to learn whether or not depth perception, or our ability to perceive three dimensions, is an innate skill or something that is learned. This speaks to one of the biggest debates in psychology:nature vs. nurture. Are our skills learned, or are they set in stone through genetics? Are our fears learned, or are we doomed to have certain fears due to our family history?

Psychologists E.J. Gibson and R.D. Walk put together the visual cliff experiment, which was used to measure depth perception in infants.

The psychologists developed a test in which babies were placed on a large table of Plexiglass that was about a foot off the ground. One side of the plexiglass was covered in a tiled pattern that you might see on any floor. The other side of the plexiglass was left as it is – completely transparent. The pattern continued on the floor below the plexiglass.

Babies or animals without depth perception may not perceive the depth between the two blocks of the tiled pattern. They would see the pattern as continuous and could walk freely over the Plexiglass without fear. With depth perception, things get tricky. The way that the experiment was set up gave the illusion of a visual “cliff” without putting the babies in danger.

In order to get a wider perspective on the development of depth perception, researchers conducted a similar version of the visual cliff experiment with animals.

Like babies, researchers used infant animals. These animals included participants who were just a day old. These early studies suggested that depth perception was innate in most animals – even the youngest participants might avoid crossing the “visual cliff” and stay on the side that appeared to be safer.

But theresults of this study, like the results of the studies focused around infants, aren’t so cut and dry. Researchers also took note of whether some of the participants were raised in the dark or raised in the light. The kittens that were raised in the dark were less likely to have developed depth perception than the ones raised in the light. Rats weren’t hesitant to run across the glass cliff, as they rely on smell and touch more than vision. Even when researchers studied animals, they found that motivation isn’t as simple as what you see.

What happened when the babies were put to the task of walking across the cliff? There isn’t one solid answer. Some babies refused to walk across the visual cliff. Others could feel that the glass was able to support them on the path to their mother but still refused to cross out of fear. But most of the babies (27 out of 36 in the experiment) walked to their mother without any issues.

What did these findings say about depth perception? At the time, researchers believed that the results told a story about depth perception. They believed that depth perception was something that wasn’t developed until later. If the babies easily crawled to their mothers, they must not have depth perception, right?

Well, this isn’t exactly correct.

The results from studies as recent as 2014 have changed the way that we look at the results and depth perception in general. Let’s look at why the babies of the 1960s may have behaved in the way that they did, even if they did have depth perception.

Feeling the glass underneath them

Reassurance from their mother

Experience crawling

Biological Factors

What they found was that very young infants (as young as three months old) experienced some sort of biological reaction to the visual cliff. These babies just happened to “face their fears” even after perceiving the depth on both sides of the cliff.

All in all, researchers now believe that depth perception can be found in the youngest of infants, the fear of heights is not innate to all humans.

There is a lot that goes into this study: the development of sight, fear, experience walking, and even the facial expression of the mother or researcher on the other side of the “cliff.” The original experiments on the visual cliff didn’t exactly account for all of this when the research was conducted and the findings were published. Keep this in mind as you continue to learn about psychology and the experiments that have shaped our understanding of the world around us. Human beings are complex, and our motivation cannot be attributed to just one factor, innate or otherwise.

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Reference this article:Practical Psychology. (2021, May).Visual Cliff Experiment (Definition + Examples).Retrieved from https://practicalpie.com/visual-cliff-experiment/.Practical Psychology. (2021, May). Visual Cliff Experiment (Definition + Examples). Retrieved from https://practicalpie.com/visual-cliff-experiment/.Copy

Reference this article:

Practical Psychology. (2021, May).Visual Cliff Experiment (Definition + Examples).Retrieved from https://practicalpie.com/visual-cliff-experiment/.Practical Psychology. (2021, May). Visual Cliff Experiment (Definition + Examples). Retrieved from https://practicalpie.com/visual-cliff-experiment/.Copy

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