However on the other hand if perception was completely innate we would not be able to adjust to the distorted conditions presented to us, so this supports the theory that perception is learned.
This study however cannot be generalised to the whole population as Gilling and Brightwell only used one participant, and to find out if this is a trend to all humans a larger group should be used.
On the other side of the argument Gibson and Walk (1960) argue that perception is indeed innate. Their study involved a “visual cliff,” this is a table one half with a check pattern and the other half with glass, with a check pattern on the floor a couple of feet below the glass. Young babies which were old enough to crawl, the youngest being six months old, were placed upon this table and observed to see if they crawled onto the glass part. This was designed to discover if these babies had depth perception, and aimed to discover whether perception is innate.
Gibson and Walk discovered that most of the babies would not venture onto the glass side where it looked like they may fall. This suggests that we are born with perception of depth. However it could be that we learn this perception at a very young age, as the babies had already learned that they don’t want to fall as it might hurt, so there is nothing to say they haven’t learned depth perception. This study therefore doesn’t prove that perception is innate but proves that we do have depth perception at a very young age, and has not ruled out the possibility that it is innate.
A study to oppose Gibson and Walk, which suggests perception is not innate, is Deregowski’s cross cultural study of perception. Deregowski looked at a variety of studies in different cultures to do with perception. Possibly the most significant of these studies was those done by William Hudson. One of Hudson’s studies involved asking Zambian school children to draw the ambiguous trident and comparing their efforts to those of people from western culture. The depth cues in an ambiguous trident make the picture look like it should be three dimensional however the lines do not make sense for it to be so. It turned out that the people from western cultures found this much more difficult than the Africans. This may be because people from western cultures perceive things in 3D and people from Africa perceive in 2D. This difference in the way in which we perceive suggests that perception must be learned and the Africans have learnt it differently to those from western cultures.
However there are problems with this study which mean it is not true to life, one of these is that Hudson’s depth cues did not use texture gradient so the pictures wouldn’t be close to reality, so this means we cannot say that depth perception is learned but the way we perceive drawings may be.
Bower carried out a study in 1979 to test the theory that depth perception is innate. In his study he took babies aged between 16 to 24 weeks, he did this as to get them as young as he could to limit any chance of learning, however all avoidance of learning is very difficult as we are constantly learning. He then devised a piece of apparatus that creates illusions to make it appear there is a three dimensional cube there. He then took the children and presented them with a real cube and this illusion cube, he then observed their reactions. He observed that when the children reached out and grabbed the real cube they were not surprised, however when they reached and grabbed the illusion and found it was not there they were surprised and distressed.
Bower suggested that if they were surprised that there was no cube there then obviously they could not tell that there is any difference so could obviously see the depth cues. So this suggests that since they are of such a young age and would not have had enough time to learn, then perception must be innate. The results of this study by Bower were later reinforced in his later studies.
This study however does not prove without doubt that perception is innate, as we do not know how long it would take for perception to be learned if it is a learned thing. So in this study depth perception may have already been learned by the babies by the time they took part in the study. To test if it is innate or not this study would have to be carried out with new born babies. Also in this study Bower does not prove that the babies can actually perceive the depth, all he proves is that the babies cannot see any difference between the real cube and the illusion, so his theory doesn’t have good evidence to support it.
Looking at these four studies we can see there are arguments that suggest both sides of the argument. However it is very difficult to do a study which will prove that perception is innate as there is always time for the children to learn before the study, unless the study is done the second a child is born, however a study to test perception requires a response, which may be difficult to test for on a newly born baby. What is clear from these studies is that if perception is in fact learned then it is learned very quickly at a very young age. The information does suggest that perception is innate; however there is also a lot of information that suggests it is learned. Also there are many different types of perception, and some of these studies look at different ones. Some could be innate, and some could be learned, it could be that none of these studies reach the wrong conclusion. It would be apparent that some factors are indeed innate and some are learned, but we are definitely born with the potential to have perception.