Fear of Heights in Infants?

Karen E. Adolph; Kari S. Kretch; Vanessa LoBue

doi:10.1177/0963721413498895

Fear of Heights in Infants?

Karen E. Adolph, Kari S. Kretch, Vanessa LoBue

Psychology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Based largely on the famous "visual cliff" paradigm, conventional wisdom is that crawling infants avoid crossing the brink of a dangerous drop-off because they are afraid of heights. However, recent research suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Avoidance and fear are conflated, and there is no compelling evidence to support fear of heights in human infants. Infants avoid crawling or walking over an impossibly high drop-off because they perceive affordances for locomotion-the relations between their own bodies and skills and the relevant properties of the environment that make an action such as descent possible or impossible.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	60-66
Number of pages	7
Journal	Current Directions in Psychological Science
Volume	23
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413498895
State	Published - Feb 2014

Keywords

affordances
emotion
locomotion

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Psychology

Access to Document

10.1177/0963721413498895

Cite this

@article{57c0636b0f1c40b9afe325c91cd8f7be,

title = "Fear of Heights in Infants?",

abstract = "Based largely on the famous {"}visual cliff{"} paradigm, conventional wisdom is that crawling infants avoid crossing the brink of a dangerous drop-off because they are afraid of heights. However, recent research suggests that the conventional wisdom is wrong. Avoidance and fear are conflated, and there is no compelling evidence to support fear of heights in human infants. Infants avoid crawling or walking over an impossibly high drop-off because they perceive affordances for locomotion-the relations between their own bodies and skills and the relevant properties of the environment that make an action such as descent possible or impossible.",

keywords = "affordances, emotion, locomotion",

author = "Adolph, {Karen E.} and Kretch, {Kari S.} and Vanessa LoBue",

note = "Funding Information: The project was supported by Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R37HD033486 to Karen E. Adolph. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.",

year = "2014",

month = feb,

doi = "10.1177/0963721413498895",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "23",

pages = "60--66",

journal = "Current Directions in Psychological Science",

issn = "0963-7214",