. One of the very first to look at whether perception is learned or inherited was that of Stratton, in 1893. He spent a week wearing an inverting lens over one eye. (The other eye was covered with an eye patch). For the first couple of days, he had great difficulty in adjusting to an upside down world, but after a while his perception adapted, and he didn’t have any trouble. It was only when he saw something that was obviously wrong, like a candle flame pointing downwards that he realised he was seeing upside down. This shows that you can adapt to a different way of living by getting to know what is around you, so it shows that he was able to learn how to cope with this situation and it didn’t come to him straight away. In 1966 Bower set up an investigation. He set up an arrangement whereby very young babies could be shown different shapes, and could indicate whether they recognised them by moving their heads very slightly to the side, by doing this a switch was set of which was in the pillow at the side of their heads. This way bower trained the babies to react in this way by rewarding them with a peek-a-boo game from the experimenter if they moved there heads when they were shown a particular cube.
Once the babies were reacting to that particular cube, Bower tried varying what the babies were shown. He showed them the cube at different angles, at different distances and also differently sized cubes at various distances. The idea was that the babies were born with size consistency, they would still recognise the cube even when it was further away and looked smaller. He could still recognise something when it was shown to them at different angle. Bower found that even very young babies had the basics of size and shape constancy, although it was nowhere near as highly developed as an adult’s. So it seems that there is some aspect to this type of perception but shows that we still need to develop it with our experiences. A different method was tried by Franz 1961. He set up an apparatus which allows him to detect what very young infant’s shapes, two at a time. By measuring how long infants looked at each shape, Franz was able to tell which one they preferred and he deduced from this that they must be able to detect what was on it or they wouldn’t prefer it. He found that babies tended to prefer patterns to plain shapes. This was important because it showed that infant had basic figure-ground perception, so it had the ability to distinguish figures against backgrounds. He also figured out that the figure that the children were more taken to was that of a human face. He then felt that some kind of basic pattern perception is inherited, also a tendency to look at other people.
A study by Gibson and walk investigated depth perception in new- born animals, such as goat kids and day old chicks. They set up a ‘visual cliff’ which was a platform which seemed as though it had a sheer drop on one side of it. Both sides of the platform (the shallow and deep side) were covered in think glass, and so the drop was only ‘visual’ one, when newborn animals refused to go on to that side. Kittens eyes had just opened wouldn’t go on it either and babies wouldn’t crawl on it. Rats would go on it quite happily, but if their whiskers were removed, then they refused. They then came to conclusion that vision is only the second most important sense for rats- touch is more important. This study seems to indicate that many animals have an inherited kind of depth perception. Which would serve at least to prevent them falling over cliffs. One problem when investigating babies is that that they can’t really tell you what is happening. Von Senden in 1960 studied a group of people who had gained there sight and what they could perceive was very limited. They could detect Gregory (1963) was a study that was performed on a 47 year old man, who had wanted to see all his life Gregory argued that we interpret geometric illusions in the way that we that we do because of constancy scaling. By this, he means that we apply our perceptual; constancies to the figures of the illusions. He was able to read a little and he done this by cross model transfer to interpret his new senses. When the subject was younger someone had given him building bocks with raised letters on and he often handles and tried to imagine what the looked liked. As the subject was so willing to learn and had such a high motivation drive and was willing to learn and find out more, it is difficult whether to say this is evidence of a nature nurture debate. We are able to perceive with our other senses too, and his previous experiences meant that he was not learning to see just from scratch but was applying what he already new. So in many ways it isn’t the same as a new born baby.
The well-known Necker cube shows a figure alternating in depth. Sometimes the face marked with the 'o' lies in front, sometimes at the back - it jumps suddenly from the one position to the other Perception is not determined simply by the stimulus patterns; rather it is a dynamic searching for the best interpretation of the available data. The data are sensory signals, and also knowledge of the many other characteristics of objects. Many experiences can affect perception, and how far we have to learn to see, But it seems clear that perception involves going beyond the immediately given evidence of the senses: this evidence is assessed on many grounds and generally we make the best bet, and see things more or less correctly. But the senses do not give us a picture of the world directly; rather they provide evidence for the checking of hypotheses about what lies before us. The Necker cube is a pattern which contains no clue as to which of two alternative hypotheses is correct: the perceptual system entertains first one then the other hypothesis, and never comes to a conclusion, for there is no best answer. Sometimes the eye and brain come to wrong conclusions, and then we suffer hallucinations or illusions.
Some criticisms of the nature nurture debate is that most research involves babies who although young, have had some experience of the world, and therefore it is hard to separate the learned and innate responses evidence of the empiricist position. It is also difficult to interpret animal studies to human studies. Most psychologists use animals when studying different perspectives, so they can get a valid conclusion. But with it being animals they are studying and not humans who are the one who will be of benefit.