Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1690, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2013 Jul 1;24(7):1361-7. doi: 10.1177/0956797613476047. Epub 2013 May 30.
Human infants with little or no crawling experience surprisingly show no wariness of heights, but such wariness becomes exceptionally strong over the life span. Neither depth perception nor falling experiences explain this extraordinary developmental shift; however, something about locomotor experience does. The crucial component of locomotor experience in this emotional change is developments in visual proprioception-the optically based perception of self-movement. Precrawling infants randomly assigned to drive a powered mobility device showed significantly greater visual proprioception, and significantly greater wariness of heights, than did controls. More important, visual proprioception mediated the relation between wariness of heights and locomotor experience. In a separate study, crawling infants' visual proprioception predicted whether they would descend onto the deep side of a visual cliff, a finding that confirms the importance of visual proprioception in the development of wariness of heights.
人类婴儿如果爬行经验很少或没有，他们会出人意料地对高度没有警惕感，但这种警惕感会在整个生命周期中变得异常强烈。无论是深度知觉还是摔倒经验都无法解释这种非凡的发展转变；然而，运动经验的某些方面确实可以解释。在这种情绪变化中，运动经验的关键组成部分是视觉本体感受的发展——基于光学的自我运动感知。与对照组相比，被随机分配使用动力移动设备的准爬行婴儿表现出明显更强的视觉本体感受和对高度的明显警惕感。更重要的是，视觉本体感受中介了对高度的警惕感和运动经验之间的关系。在一项单独的研究中，爬行婴儿的视觉本体感受预测了他们是否会下到视觉悬崖的深侧，这一发现证实了视觉本体感受在对高度的警惕感发展中的重要性。
