Eleanor J. Gibson
Eleanor Jack Gibson was an American psychologist who focused on reading development and perceptual learning in infants. Gibson began her career at Smith College as an instructor in 1932, publishing her first works on research conducted as an undergraduate student. Gibson was able to circumvent the many obstacles she faced due to the Great Depression and gender discrimination, by finding research opportunities that she could meld with her own interests. Gibson, with her husband James J. Gibson, created the Gibsonian ecological theory of development, which emphasized how important perception was because it allows humans to adapt to their environments. Perhaps her most well-known contribution to psychology was the "visual cliff," which studied depth perception in both human and animal species, leading to a new understanding of perceptual development in infants. Gibson was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971, the National Academy of Education in 1972, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1977. In 1992, she was awarded the National Medal of Science.
Early life and education
Eleanor Gibson was born on December 7, 1910, in Peoria, Illinois. Her father, William Alexander Jack, was a businessman who specialized in the wholesale of hardware. Her mother, Isabel Grier Jack, was a homemaker who graduated from Smith College. Gibson had one sibling, Emily Jack, who was born in 1916.Gibson began attending Smith College at the age of sixteen with the intention of studying languages. She graduated in 1931 with a B.A. degree. While at Smith, she became interested in experimental psychology. Gibson completed her master's degree at Smith, graduating in 1933. In 1935, Gibson began her Ph.D. at Yale University. While attending Yale, Gibson became interested in comparative psychology. Originally, Gibson had asked Robert Yerkes to be her dissertation advisor. He declined, stating that he does not permit women to work in his lab. Clark L. Hull, a behavioural psychologist, became her dissertation supervisor, despite the fact that they did not necessarily have the same theoretical perspective. Gibson completed her dissertation on [|differentiation] using behaviourist terminology. After a year at Yale, Gibson passed the required exams and moved back to Northampton, Massachusetts, where she continued to teach at Smith. She completed her dissertation two years later in 1938, at which point she received her doctorate from Yale.
Academic career
Gibson began working at Smith College as an instructor in 1932. She took a year off in 1935 to pursue her Ph.D. at Yale University, before returning as an instructor at Smith College. In 1940, Gibson became an assistant professor at Smith. In 1941, James Gibson was requested to conduct perception research in the Flying Training Command of the United States Air Force at which point the family moved to Fort Worth, Texas. After a period of time, they moved to Santa Ana, California. After World War II ended, they moved back to Northampton, Massachusetts. Gibson resumed her position at Smith College in 1946.In 1949, James Gibson took a job at Cornell University, requiring that the family move to Ithaca, New York. Gibson was unable to obtain a job at Cornell due to anti-nepotism policies prohibiting her from working in the same department as her husband. Thus, Gibson became an unpaid research associate. She continued her research by reaching out to other Cornell faculty, working alongside Howard Liddell, a professor in psychology. Gibson worked in Liddell's Behaviour Farm Laboratory, giving her experience working with and rearing baby animals. Gibson's interest in development grew after working with the animals. Liddell's Behaviour Farm is where the discovery of the behaviour that led to the Visual Cliff took place. After conducting research there for two years, Gibson left the Behaviour Farm upon finding out that her control group of goats was given away. Later, Gibson received funding from the United States Air Force and grants from the United States Navy to work on perceptual learning. In order to further explore this topic, Gibson and her husband, James, co-authored a study on the perception of nonsense scribbles, eventually leading to the differentiation theory. Additionally, when Richard Walk was hired at Cornell University, Gibson and Walk decided to explore discrimination learning on rats who were raised in different environments, eventually leading to the Visual Cliff experiment. Their work together ended when Walk left Cornell University to pursue work at George Washington University.
In 1966, James took a job elsewhere and was no longer employed by Cornell University. With anti-nepotism policies no longer an issue, Gibson became a professor at Cornell with tenure. After her academic partnership with Walk ended, Gibson was asked to join an interdisciplinary project with the goal of achieving a better understanding of the reading processes.
In 1972, Gibson became the Susan Linn Sage Professor of Psychology and was given her own lab. At this point, Gibson turned her focus to perception in infants and turned her new lab into an infant perception lab.
In 1979, Gibson was forced to retire from her faculty position, the same year that her husband, James, passed away. Prior to her retirement, she began visiting other universities, and continued to do so for many years afterwards. Gibson continued to work in her lab until 1987, at which point she moved to Middlebury, Vermont, to live closer to her daughter.
Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Times)
Eleanor Gibson lived through the period of the Great Depression and when gender discrimination was considered the norm. The time and social norms influenced her career. Gibson attended Smith College to complete her B.A. degree and M.S. degree. Smith College, at the time, provided Gibson the opportunity to be in an atmosphere that challenged and encouraged women to be scholars and scientists. Living through the Great Depression impacted her in a way where, due to financial issues and marriage, she could not begin her Ph.D. program until years later. She stayed as an instructor at Smith College for two years teaching labs before she set off to Yale University to obtain her Ph.D.In the spirit of the times, Yale University, unlike Smith College, did not support women's careers. Yale University did not provide financial assistance toward Gibson's post-secondary studies. Smith College awarded Gibson with a scholarship to continue her studies at Yale University, covering her tuition. Eleanor Gibson had strong interests in comparative psychology. Her interests led her to approach Robert Yerkes as her dissertation advisor. As gender discrimination was the norm, Yerks initially dismissed Gibson. Yerkes did not allow women to work in his laboratory. Gibson faced many gender barriers but sought alternatives to complete her goals. Gibson successfully completed her studies at Yale University, earning her Ph.D. in 1938.
Gibson's academic career was disrupted due to the war and after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. She accompanied her husband, James Gibson, to Texas and later California as he conducted research in the Flying Training Command of the Army Air Force. Eleanor Gibson continued her academic career at Smith College as a teacher after a 4-year hiatus.
In 1949, Gibson and her husband left Smith College and moved to Cornell University. Cornell, at the time, did not hire women as part of their faculty. Cornell also had an anti-nepotism rule that did not allow her to work as a faculty member because her husband, James Gibson, had already been hired into their Psychology department. Gibson would work as a research associate for 16 years, unpaid. Gibson continued her research whilst facing gender discrimination and anti-nepotism rules.
Personal life
Gibson met her husband, James Gibson, at the end of her junior year at Smith while attending a graduation garden party. James was an assistant professor, and the day after meeting James, Gibson changed her schedule to include James’ advanced experimental psychology course. They married in September 1932. Their first child, James J. Gibson, Junior, was born in 1940. Their second child, Jean Gibson, was born in 1943. Gibson decided to take a break from research for a few years in order to focus on her children and teaching.Death
In Eleanor Gibson's final years she was focused on writing and publishing books. Her goal was to illustrate her progression of thinking. Her book titled, "An Odyssey in Learning and Perception" is a collection of her academic papers starting from the 1930s. The book encompasses her 50 years of work toward perceptual learning and development.In 2002, before her death, Gibson published a final book. Her final book was initially written as a personal family history but later evolved into a story about the lives of two psychologists. She titled her final book: "Perceiving the affordances: A portrait of two psychologists." Gibson died on December 30, 2002, in Columbia, South Carolina.
Contributions to psychology
Perceptual learning
Gibson was highly influenced by the work of her husband, James Gibson. Together they developed the Gibsonian ecological theory of development. This theory influenced her research on perceptual learning.Gibson believed that a radically different new view of perceptual learning was needed. One of her major studies involved the steps to how children perceive their environment. Gibson and her husband argued that the aspect of learning is to strengthen your insight or perception of the environment. This process of perceptual learning was deemed a part of differentiation by Gibson and her husband. Humans first have the tendency to categorize everything that appears similar into groups. In other words, people tend to overgeneralize. With perceptual learning, humans can battle the tendency to overgeneralize by learning to make appropriate distinctions, such as the specific patterns and properties of different stimulus. An example Gibson and her husband used to describe this is that someone who regularly participates in wine tasting can taste the differences in many wines. However, someone participating for the very first time might think many if not all wines taste the same.
Gibson worked with her husband James on a joint study to explore the perception of nonsense scribbles to clarify this concept of perceptual learning. The study consisted of three different groups. The first group had ten participants between 6- and 8-year-olds. The second group had ten participants between 8½- and 11-year-olds. The third group had twelve participants that were adults.
The participants were tasked to identify one standard scribble from a set of similar scribbles varying in many different dimensions. The scribbles contained coils ranging from three to five and they were different in lengths. Some coils spiral clockwise while other coils spiral counter-clockwise. The experiment had a deck of cards with a different scribble on each card. Also included within the deck were various cards printed with other figures. The participants were given a target to look at for around 5s. They were informed that some of the cards had coils printed on them that are identical to the target. Next, each card was presented to the participant for about 3s. They were tasked in choosing the cards that were identical to the target. In the first trial, the deck of cards consist of 17 scribbles that were similar to the target and 12 other prints that were all very different from both the target and each other.
Results showed that three groups learned to identify and differentiate items at various levels and various rates. In the first trial, the group with the youngest participants were able to identify most of the scribbles identical to the target, an average of 13.4. This was followed by the group with the older children who identified more than the third group, an average of 7.9. The group consisting of adults identified the least identical items, an average of 3.0. However, results also indicated that the group of adults were able to achieve perfect identification within an average of 3.1 trials, while the group of older kids achieved it within an average of 4.7 trials. On the contrary, many of the young children in the first group failed to match any correct coil to the target. The number of trials needed to achieve perfect identification could not be achieved within the duration of the study.
At first the standard scribble was imperceptible from the other scribbles but after repeated tests the standard scribble became clear. The participants were tested until the standard was identified correctly without any correction given. The Gibson's then stated that the stimulus held all the information for perception rather than the participants learning to perceive through an associative process. This resulted in perceptual learning as being redefined as a change in what was perceived by an observer became more sensitive to the different aspects of a stimulus. At the beginning of the study, many of the stimuli or coil, appear to look identical. But with practice, the participants learn to tell the stimuli apart from one another. The process of perceptual learning occurs faster over time through repetition.
Gibson states that differentiation is a crucial aspect to both evolutionary psychology and developmental psychology. Perceptual learning allow humans to respond differently yet appropriately to the stimuli in their environment. Gibson said that the links between the perceiver and their environment is the domain for where perceptual development occurs. She states that a person has only achieved perceptual learning of specificity if they can differentiate one object from another and if they can identify the properties of that object.
Another study Gibson did in perceptual learning is the perception of words and spelling patterns. Learning to read is a crucial aspect in child development and is complicated as words can have different meanings when perceived by the reader. Gibson was interested in factors enabling a reader to reach the stage where they can instantly tell words apart. Gibson argues that pronounceability has an impact in reading as certain combinations of the alphabet are easier to pronounce than others. Certain letters pair well in certain positions in words which allows for easier perception. According to Gibson, these particular spelling patterns are pronounced the same. For example, the positions of the letters "glurck" is pronounceable despite it not being an English word. On the other hand, the positions of "ckurgl" is not as easy to pronounce. A person fluent in English may notice that the letters "gl" is the start of many words while "ck" is at the end of many words. Such spelling patterns in words allow a reader to easily perceive the words to pronounce.