4. Describe the contributions of Eleanor Gibson, including her research on the visual cliff and her theory of infant's active role in the development of perception.

Eleanor Gibson was an American experimental psychologist

Explanation:

Eleanor Gibson was an American experimental psychologist whose famous works includes her study of depth perception theory on how children perceive their environment.

Eleanor stumbled on the virtual cliff discovery in one of her experiment that involves raising rats in the dark on a virtual cliff made of a sheet of glass with patterned paper, an experiment initially meant to get more use out of dark-reared rats. The dark-reared having presumed to have lost perception in the dark, was expected to walk indiscriminately on the near and far sides of the cliff. However, to her surprise the dark-reared rats chose the near side, and consistently avoided the glass-covered drop-off portion of the cliff. This shows the dark-reared rats which have not had any previous experience about depth could perceive depth. Gibson later on tested this experience on other animals. She also tested it on human babies using the presence of the mother to initiate crawling. The babies were also found to perceive depth on the cliff without a prior knowledge or experience of such.