The Visual Cliff's Forgotten Menagerie
Rats, Goats, Babies, and Myth-making in the History of Psychology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4941189 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elissa N Rodkey (0000-0001-9876-4145, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 113-140 |
| Publication date | 2015-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5061 • E-ISSN: 1520-6696 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/jhbs.21712 |
| PMID | 25728287 |
| OpenAlex | W2148844998 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 53 |
Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk's famous visual cliff experiment is one of psychology's classic studies, included in most introductory textbooks. Yet the famous version which centers on babies is actually a simplification, the result of disciplinary myth-making. In fact the visual cliff's first subjects were rats, and a wide range of animals were tested on the cliff, including chicks, turtles, lambs, kid goats, pigs, kittens, dogs, and monkeys. The visual cliff experiment was more accurately a series of experiments, employing varying methods and a changing apparatus, modified to test different species. This paper focuses on the initial, nonhuman subjects of the visual cliff, resituating the study in its original experimental logic, connecting it to the history of comparative psychology, Gibson's interest in comparative psychology, as well as gender-based discrimination. Recovering the visual cliff's forgotten menagerie helps to counter the romanticization of experimentation by focusing on the role of extrascientific factors, chance, complexity, and uncertainty in the experimental process
Archaeology · Art · Art history · Cliff · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Cognitive science · Comparative psychology · History of psychology · Literature · Menagerie · Mythology · Painting · Rock art · Visual arts · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · History · Neuroscience · Psychology
An Ecological Approach to Perceptual Learning and Development
The Animal Estate
Of Rats and Psychologists
Knowledge Producers and Knowledge Acquirers
In Memoriam
There is more to our history of giving
Whatever happened to little Albert
Psychology
An Interview With Eleanor Gibson
Obituary
The altered rationale for the choice of a standard animal in experimental psychology
Searching for the second generation of American women psychologists
Robert Yerkes, sex research, and the problem of data simplification
Psychobiology, sex research and chimpanzees
Maternal emotional signaling
Eleanor J. Gibson
History, Origin Myth and Ideology
The Kitty Genovese murder and the social psychology of helping
Case histories in the great power of steady misinterpretation
A case history in scientific method
The problem of raccoon intelligence in behaviourist America
In Dogs We Trust? Intersubjectivity, Response‐Able Relations, and the Making of Mine Detector Dogs
The evolution of beasts and babies
Multispecies Networks
Mothers, machines, and morals
A reflection
| Citations per year | 0.44 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2017 - 2020 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |