Is Perception Innate?
Perception is the process if seeing visual cues and then the brain processing the information to produce depth perception, shape, movement and textures. Whether or not it is innate – hereditary (born with it), or learned through experience will be discussed in this essay as it is something that has never really been answered by psychologists.
There are two different types of approaches and two different theories or beliefs for the study of perception – Nativists and empiricists. Nativists have theories that believe that we are born with perception without any prior knowledge or experience and before our eyes and senses have grown. However, empiricists believe that our perception develops after learning and experience from our environment. There are two forms of empiricism – Theory and method. In this case it will be theory that this essay will cover as it is the assumption that knowledge results from experience and learning where as method is the development and growth. The two approaches to explaining perception are:
The constructive approach: developed by Gregory (1970). The constructive approach is based on the belief that a person constructs a model of the world by transforming, enhancing, distorting and discarding information. This means that humans constructed a world of objects from information within the environment using lines, shade and colours along with our own knowledge so the world that we are seeing is not copies but are constructed by our brains from our knowledge and skills using sensory information.
The Direct Perception approach: this approach is associated with the ecological approach. The most important feature with this approach is that perception is seen as picking up the information from the environment and it does not require any further information being added to it to make it meaningful. A central concept for the ecological approach is the notion of an affordance where information is simply detected by the person rather then being constructed (like the constructive approach). One example of an affordance is the door handle where in many places a door will have a handle for you to pull and a panel or bar for you to push where the action are grasp and pull or push against the panel or bar.
According to Locke (1960), a baby that has just been born has a memory and brain like a blank slate; like that of a hard drive ready to be written on which is known as tabula rasa. This means that perception is learned.
Studying neonates is the preferred method for psychology researchers to determine whether perception is innate or learned because the babies have not had time to gain any experience of its surroundings unlike the studies taken on babies aged between six and twenty one days by Bower, Broughton & Moore (1970).
Neonate studies on depth perception show that if you move a large object towards a twenty day old baby’s face, you will notice that it automatically blinks, squints, cries or even covers its face because it can recognise the harm in which the object poses if it were to hit the baby. This is an indication that motion parallax is a cue for distance, thus teaching the baby depth perception and writing this to the tabula rasa.
Neonates come equipped with the ability to identify colour, brightness and movement which means that some of their perception is innate. They are able to organise their perception using Gestalt principals such as continuation, closure, proximity and similarity. In this case closure is the principal in question. Basically this is a shape which is incomplete or obstructed by another object and the brain fills in the blanks. Bower (1977) showed a triangle to a two month old baby with a stripe across a section and then showed several other triangles of different variations to the baby to see which one it would choose. They chose the full triangle. This is because they see the object as a triangle behind a shape, however, there were very few chances that a baby would have seen very many triangles in its life so Bower came to the conclusion that closure might be innate.
Studies by Gibson & Walk (1960) showed that a baby’s depth perception is innate because they created a ‘visual cliff apparatus’ to test this. This apparatus was a platform of two different levels with a drop on one side but a sheet of glass at the same level as the top layer. The texture pattern on the top layer was the same as that on the bottom layer to look like one floor but to also give a sense of depth. This is how they created the cliff or drop. They placed a baby on the top ledge and got its mother to call it from one side and then call it from the other to see if the baby would go over the edge. The results proved that a baby’s perception is innate because they would not go off the edge of the ‘cliff’. The only babies that did were the ones that did it by mistake and not by their mother provoking them to do so.
Gibson and Walk (1960) also tested baby animals that were able to walk on their own not long after birth. These animals were lambs, chicks, baby goats etc that had their sensitive whiskers removed so this could not be a factor that could affect the experiment because Gibson and Walk (1960) were testing perception only. They found that if the animals were placed on the glass area over the drop the animal would just freeze and not move, however, if left to walk on there they would not and would stay on the upper platform.
Cross-cultural studies show that there is a perceptual difference between Western cultures and other cultures in areas such as
So, according to Western culture, their environment consists of lines which train their perception which results in a sense of depth and size; in African tribes that live in open land and round huts such as the Lobi, Johada (1966) saw that they have nothing to train their perception to give them an idea of depth or distance. This means that they are not likely to be subject to the Muller-Lyer.
The Muller-Lyer
Turnbull (1961) showed a BaMbuti archer to see a herd of buffalo in open land and asked him what he saw, he told Turnbull that he had never seen insects like that before. Turnbull told the archer that the insects were in fact buffalo but this offended the archer. The archer was adamant that Turnbull was using a form of magic to deceive him until Turnbull drove him to the buffalo and proved his point. This shows that people without distance and depth cues find it difficult to relate distance with size.
Another research into the Muller-Lyer was by Rivers (1901) in which he compared English people to that of Murray Islanders. He found that they were less susceptible to the Muller-Lyer than the English people but more susceptible to that of the horizontal-vertical illusion.
The most common query is whether perception of depth, distance, motion or other cues is due to it being innate or learned by past experiences. The use of the word ‘innate’ means that perception is due to human beings adapting to our surroundings when we are born. When using the term ‘past experience’ it means that perception is the end result or after being shown patterns or conditions such as the Muller-Lyer in comparison with the English and the Murray Islanders and also with the BaMbuti which shows a learning process. Although there have been hundreds of years of research on this subject, there is still no answer to the question as to whether or not perception is innate. It looks as though some perception is innate such as growth and reaction, but past experience is also a factor such as depth perception and motion parallax.
Reference to this article: Hallas, J. (2007) ‘Is Perception Innate?‘ Date accessed: http://rose.nadasolutions.com/pink/2007/12/07/is-perception-innate/
References
Bower, Broughton & Moore (1970) – Bower, T.G.R, Broughton, J.M. & Moore, M.K. (1970) Infant responses to approaching objects: An indicator of response to distal variables. Perception & Psychophysics, 9, 193-196.
Bower (1977) – Bower, T.G.R (1977) The Perceptual World of the Child.
Gibson & Walk (1960) – Gibson, E.J. & Walk, P.D (1960) The Visual Cliff. Scientific American, 202, 64-71
Gregory (1970) – Gregory, R. L. (1970) The Intelligent Eye.
Jahoda (1966) – Jahoda, G. (1966) Geometric illusions and environment: A study in
Locke (1960) – Locke, J. (1960) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,
Rivers (1901) – Rivers, W.H.R. (1901) Vision. In A.C Haddon (ed.) Reports of the
Turnbull (1961) – Turnbull, C (1961) The
Bibliography
McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Science and Technology Encyclopedia Information about Perception, 2005, The McGraw-Hil Companies Inc.