The other day I was taking my morning constitutional with my one year old twins, and we stopped for lunch outside of an office building. I took the kids out of their stroller, and set them on the grass. My son immediately crawled to the edge of the building, and proceeded to crawl onto the steel grating that covered the basement window wells. This was a steel grate, fairly heavy duty, with webbing perhaps a 1/4" thick, and roughly 2" * 6" gaps, over a 6 or 7 foot drop. He seemed to enjoy being out there, and crawled around quite a bit. Is this typical behavior for kids? I know how children react to the visual cliff but the grating has some substance to it. He also likes to crawl along the edge of the retaining wall in front of my house, which varies from 1 to 4 feet in height. (Needless to say, he is always well supervised when he does this.)
I think that babies, even newborns, have an instinctive fear of falling. If they feel they are about to be dropped by someone holding them, they will panic.
However, at the early ages they don’t seem to have a well developed sense of depth perception and distance.
When my children were crawling and first learning to negotiate stairs, I noticed that whenever they came to the dividing line between the carpet and the kitchen linoleum they would always turn around and “back down” onto the linoleum.
We also had a Christmas tree ornament that was a miniature rocking horse. All 3 of my kids when they were about 1 or 2 took this tiny horse off of the tree and tried to sit on it. We had to keep gluing it back together.
I saw something on the TV a couple of years ago. A baby was placed on a platform that was adjacent to a ‘pit’ covered by a plexiglass sheet. The baby crawled right out onto it. Then the mother made ‘scary faces’ when the baby approached the edge, and the baby began to avoid the ‘precipice’.
I saw an experiment with kittens. After their eyes opened they seemed not to understand heights and would step (waddle) off edges (onto a transparent safety surface). Weeks later they would avoid the edge.
Conversly to Johnny L. A.'s post,
I remember a program where babies did not crawl on the plexi. The program determined that we (humans) are born with only 2 fears : heights and snakes, though I saw a photo in NG that showed a baby wrapped up in a very big snake apparently unafraid.
Maybe individuals are born with different fears.
I’ve always heard we are born with two fears.
Heights and loud noises.
Why would we be born with an inate fear of snakes?
You are right it was loud noises. I heard the snake thing from a show about evolution. Apparently monkey are born with a fear of snakes so by inference…
'Swat I get for trusting my memory.
I don’t think babies are born with an innate fear of anything.
Google “Gibson” and “Walk” and “cliff” (and “psychology,” if you’re having trouble) for information about Gibson and Walk’s 1960 experiment with the “visual cliff” and depth perception in human infants and other species.
There were other aspects of the study that indicated that the babies had a fear of heights, like an increased heart rate when placed on the deep side, but it’s debatable whether this was a learned response or an innate one.
Heh…and immediately after posting I see Emilio Lizardo already mentioned it right thar in his OP. :smack: 
I believe you are miss labeling a normal reflex which has nothing to do with fear. Infants have a moro reflex that many people confuse with fear.