Question

What is the evidence for nature vs. nurture in Perceptual development?

Answer 1

Perceptual development can be defined as the development related to the process of absorbing, organizing and interpretating sensory information.

The nature vs nurture debate is also applicable for perceptual development.Following is the evidence for the same:

• The nativist view(nature/genetic) view asserts that we are already born with a brain that has the ability to recognize stimuli by their design and construction. The evidence for this is the visual cliff experiment which shows how very young animals too and at aatimea whenwthey dontd have a chance totlearn anything. The experiment had 36 babies between the age group of 6 to 14 months to crawl first on the shallow side of the cliff. Later with the mother on the other side of the transparent glass cliff thetbaby was asked to crawl to the other side.The experiment indicated that babies as young as this age group were able to perceive depth cues and rhus depth perception.
• The evidence for empiricist or nurture view of perceptual development was through experiments where perceptual development was seen to be hindered if sensory deprivation was present. More the deprivation more was the perceptual deficits.