Why Infants Fall Over A Veritable Cliff

Infants who have newly acquired the ability to walk, or even crawl, may think they have mastered locomotion, but when put to the test, most fail to accomplish the simplest of tasks. Why is it so? Karen Adolph describes in her article, “Why infants Fall Over a Veritable Cliff,” an experiment which tests such a thing. The purpose of the experiment is to find a relationship between infants’ postural experience and their ability to apply it to a controlled test, in addition to finding what facilitates the coordination between perception and action. Nine-month-old infants were tested on a gap apparatus called a “veritable cliff,” which was composed of a large, stationary standing platform and a movable landing platform. In the first experiment,
As a result, it was found that all infants were able to safely span larger gaps when in the sitting position, as opposed to the crawling one. In their more experienced sitting position, the infants readily avoided falling into the gap, whereas the inexperienced crawlers fell right into the ditch. This provides evidence for the Sway model, which states that infants must learn posture by posture how to advance certain
For example, Adolph states that “if infants learn to avoid a discrepancy in depth of the ground surface because they are afraid of heights, associate heights with the perceptual consequences of falling, or know that the body cannot be supported in empty space, then they should show similar responses regardless of the posture in which they are tested.” Although this point is very valid in the context of this particular study, I would disagree. Experience is a crucial factor in children’s development because not only does it teach the infant what is safe and approachable, it also teaches the infant what to avoid. Therefore, it is incorrect to completely exclude the concept of experience. In terms of the design of the experiments, there were more boys (11), than there were girls (8). Despite that being a small difference, this could still skew the results because boys tend to behave differently and approach certain tasks in varying manners than girls. However, I was content with the fact that a psychophysical staircase procedure was used to “estimate the boundary between gaps to estimate the boundary between gaps were safe and risky relative to each infant’s body size.” This ensured that all infants had an equal chance of succeeding or failing the task, according to his/her size. Another point to note here is that the results obtained from this