Eleanor J. Gibson, developmental psychologist, has been conducting research for over sixty years. Primarily Gibson's research has focused on the perceptual development of infants; However, she has also conducted studies on development of reading skills in children and the controlled rearing behaviors of animals.

Eleanor Gibson was born in Peoria, Il. in 1910. Gibson attended Yale University and received her Ph.D. in 1938. Gibson then spent the majority of her career at Cornell University in New York. Today, Gibson continues her work in psychology at Middlebury University in Vermont.

Gibson is most notably recognized for her differentiation theory which suggests that we perceive stimuli when we identify specific features of the stimuli. Gibson and Walk developed a device, known as the visual cliff, used to test infant's abilities in depth perception. The results of Gibson and Walk's research using the visual cliff, suggest that 90% of children six and a half months of age or older will not crawl across the portion of the platform that appears to drop off. Implications of the results suggest that children of this age are capable of perceiving depth.

Gibson, Eleanor J. (1992). The perceived self in infancy. Psychological Inquiry. 3, (2), 119-121.

Gibson, Eleanor J. (1988). Exploratory behavior in the development of perceiving, acting and the acquiring of knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology. 39, 1-41.

Dirks, Jean & Gibson, Eleanor 3. (1977). Infant's perception of similarity between live people and their photographs. Child Development. 48, (1), 124-130.