A baby's sense of perception is a very interesting thing. Their understanding of depth affects the way they interact with their surroundings. Since their previous experiences with vision are incredibly limited, they don't have very much to go off of. They don't know what to expect when they look around because they have no base line of what is typical to encounter. They have no assumptions to work out from, and therefore have an unbiased vantage point of what they are experiencing. The idea of the visual cliff, though, is just about the only thing they do have knowledge that they pull from. The threat of falling prevents them from crossing something that they don't recognize as ground, even when encouraged by their parent.
Object permanence is related to this because of the baby's underdeveloped sense of what the world is. They have to build their own relationship with the physical world and find that the things within it are (generally) here to stay. How a person (or animal) perceives their environment greatly affects how they move through it.
Though not a human infant, my sister's cat, Teddybear, is deals differently with the world than is 'normal.' Her eyes are each a different color and they recognize difference depth perceptions. Seeing two different versions of her environment simultaneously, she approaches every action with a certain distrust. When jumping down from a high place, she will lean over the edge and hang her arms down to see, perhaps, if the ground is as close as she sees it to be. Usually, it's still a few feet further than her reach. How you learn to interact with your environment is one of the most serious influencers of who you are.
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