page_title: Eleanor J. Gibson
section_title: Differentiation Theory
hierarchical_section_title: Eleanor J. Gibson / Contributions to psychology / Perceptual learning / Differentiation Theory
caption_attribution_description: English: Taken from the study "A developmental study of the discrimination of letter-like forms", written by Gibson, E. J., Gibson, J. J., Pick, A. D., &amp; Osser, H. (1962).
context_page_description: 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.
context_section_description: Within her research on perceptual learning, Eleanor Gibson was particularly interested in, what she termed, the differentiation theory. The differentiation theory states that in the information received from sensory stimulation, individuals discriminate objects in the environment and experiences by identifying unique characteristics about them, termed distinctive features.
  Eleanor Gibson performed a study to examine how young children discriminate between different “letter-like forms”. The children used in the study were between ages 4 and 8 years old. The children were given 13 standard letter-like forms in a column on the left-hand side of the page to examine. Several variations in each letter-like form, termed transformations, were given along the rows. The transformations were either slight changes in appearance by altering the lines in the form (“topological transformation” and “line-to-curve transformation”) or a change in the perspective of the letter (“rotational-reversal transformation” and “perspective transformation”) while keeping the form identical. The task given to the children was to determine and indicate which transformations were no different from the standard forms. Overall, as age increased, the amount of incorrect differentiations made decreased. However, this varied depending on the level of difficulty of the transformations. The results demonstrated that the 4 to 5 year olds had great difficulties with all variations of the forms whereas the 6 to 8 year olds performed much better and were able to discriminate between the standard letter-like forms and the variations shown. The following list is ordered from the transformations that had the largest decrease in errors (largest improvement) to the smallest (least improvement), as age increased: rotational-reversal, line-to-curve, perspective, topological. These results contribute to the research on perceptual learning in that they suggest that children learn distinctive characteristics to be used for differentiation which is a large component of the identification of letters.
caption: Eleanor Gibson 1962 letter-like forms study - standard forms and transformations
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