Eleanor Gibson
American psychologist of perceptual learning and development
American psychologist at Cornell University. With Richard Walk she designed the visual cliff to test depth perception in infants and animals, and she helped establish perceptual learning as a research area.
Why this person matters
Gibson studied how perception develops in infants and animals and argued that perceptual learning involves becoming more sensitive to distinctive features. For years she worked at Cornell as an unpaid research associate because of anti-nepotism rules.
Main contributions
The visual cliff (1960)
With Richard Walk she tested depth perception on a glass-covered drop, using species including rats, chickens, lambs, cats and human infants. In a study of 36 crawling babies, only 3 of the 27 who left the centre crawled onto the deep side.
Perceptual learning
She argued that perceptual learning involves becoming more sensitive to distinctive features of stimuli. Her 1969 book Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development reviewed the field and helped establish perceptual learning as a distinct area of research.
Ecological approach
Her later work was associated with an ecological approach to perception, developed with her husband J. J. Gibson, in which perception is a way of adapting to the environment.
Context and limits
Findings differed between species: with cats the result seen in dark-reared rats was not found, so depth perception appears to be innate in some species and learned in others. Gibson also met barriers as a woman. Robert Yerkes declined to advise her, and anti-nepotism rules kept her as a research associate until she became a professor in the mid-1960s (sources give 1965 and 1966).
In your introductory course
Sensation and perception.Appears in the perception chapter in depth perception and infant perception, and in development chapters through the visual cliff.
Related course reading: Psychology 2e, section 5.1. This is course context rather than a biographical source.
Years of active work
- 1938
Received her PhD at Yale under Clark L. Hull.
- 1949
Joined Cornell University, first as a research associate.
- 1960
Published the visual cliff research with Richard Walk.
- 1969
Published Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development.
- 1992
Received the National Medal of Science.
Sources
- APA Psychology's Feminist Voices, Eleanor J GibsonSociety or association. Institutional biography inspected.
- Encyclopedia.com, Gibson, Eleanor Jack 1910-2002Reference work. Reference article inspected.
- Wikipedia, Eleanor J. GibsonReference work. Reference article inspected.