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Child Psychology

Gibson and Walk (1960) the visual cliff

  • 3 things to know
  • Component 03

Overview

Recall questions on Gibson and Walk's 1960 visual cliff study, including the apparatus, human sample and procedure, the results for infants, chicks, lambs, rats and dark-reared kittens, the conclusion about depth perception, and its strengths, validity and ethics.

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Answer each one before you reveal it.

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Study

What did the visual cliff apparatus consist of?

Evaluation

Why can the study not prove that depth perception is innate in humans?

Key term

Who made up the human sample?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    State the aim of Gibson and Walk (1960).

    Model answer

    They aimed to investigate whether depth perception is innate or learned, by testing whether human infants and newly mobile animals would avoid an apparent drop.

  2. 2

    What did the visual cliff apparatus consist of?

    Model answer

    A large sheet of thick glass formed a single level surface; on the shallow side a patterned cloth lay directly beneath the glass, on the deep side the same pattern lay on the floor well below it, and a raised centre board divided the two.

  3. 3

    Why was glass laid across both the shallow and the deep side?

    Model answer

    So that the surface felt identical on both sides and the only difference between them was visual, and so that no participant could actually fall.

  4. 4

    Who made up the human sample?

    Model answer

    Thirty-six infants aged between 6 and 14 months took part, all of them old enough to crawl, and each was tested with their mother present.

  5. 5

    What happened to each infant during the procedure?

    Model answer

    Each baby was placed on the centre board and the mother called and beckoned to them, first from the deep side and then from the shallow side.

  6. 6

    What were the results for the human infants?

    Model answer

    Twenty-seven of the 36 infants crawled off the board onto the shallow side, while only three ventured onto the deep side; several crawled away from the mother or cried when she called from the cliff side.

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