A study investigated some of the ways in which phenomena are perceived and translated into speech, especially in the assignment of agents in a given situation. Subjects were 16 adults with infant children. The adults were shown the Visual Cliff series of pictures of an infant crawling to its mother across a glass sheet covering an open space with the appearance of varying depth, and asked to describe the pictures for someone who had not seen them and to state which of five areas of life (practical, aesthetic-moral, social, technical-physical, and care) concerned them most. The experiment was conducted in connection with a meeting giving parents information about guarding children against accidents. It was found that the subjects' stated concerns correlated with different perceptual approaches as illustrated by their observations, descriptions, and relations of environmental features. (MSE)