When it comes to processing information in babies, a lot of time is often spent on vision and how babies see it; in fact, during the first few months of life visual information processing mechanisms are developed and improved.
A Max Planck Institute survey in thirteen countries revealed that most of the verbalizations in reference to the five senses corresponded to the vision, which is significant because humans are born with many deficits that influence vision in the first few months.
Let’s see what the newborn’s visual skills are and what vision changes occur in the first few months.
It should be noted that, in the case of newborns, none of the neural systems involved in human vision are fully developed, this includes very important areas of the eyes, such as the retina and the cool nucleus, for example.
The forvea, linked to color vision, is very underdeveloped, although it undergoes a major change in the first few months, meaning that the baby has very little sensitivity to contrast, which is acquired during the first months of life.
Therefore, at birth, babies only distinguish red, white and black, at two months they are able to make most of the distinctions and only at four or five months get the vision of all colors.
Based on this idea, if a baby is offered several toy options (red, pink, beige or green), he will always prefer red, he will always want toys with more contrast. If this baby was five months old, I could choose the green toy, because by that age he’s already starting to differentiate that color.
The tradition of pastel tones and light colors for newborns is not practical with what they can perceive; you won’t see these colors at first, so red, white, and black toys with contrasts and bright colors are recommended.
The straight muscles that allow the eyeball to move and the hair muscles that support the goal are very perfect and stiff at birth, these muscles influence the baby’s ability to monitor and spasmodic movements.
As these muscles relax, vision improves in the first few months, which usually occurs between two and three months.
Due to the stiffness of the lyc muscles, the lens also does not work fully, the lens takes care of the accommodation, so for a few months babies have trouble focusing what is close and far.
In addition, they have double vision because these muscles are not very flexible, that is, they do not have binocular vision, they see two visual fields that do not overlap.
Visual acuity is the ability to see details or spatial frequency. When it comes to vision in the first months of life, newborns see only 30% of the details that an adult is able to capture.
This does not begin to improve until four months of age, until an adult’s level of vision is reached per year of age. For babies to see the details, it is necessary that the position of the object is neither too far nor too far The best level of vision for babies is two meters.
How can one-month-old babies recognize their parents if their visual acuity is much lower than six-month or one-year-olds?
This can be answered with the range of options of the baby, humans are multimodal, that is, they are guided by more than one sensory path, the best distance merges with the information of movement, odors, etc. , which leads to their recognition through sensory integration.
Babies prefer to look at what they are able to grasp, it is their limitations that lead them to prefer certain things to others, when the baby is born he usually pays attention to the edges, contours or angles, that is because it is the parts of the objects that offer a contrast that he can capture.
So, at first, the baby can’t see a face, you won’t even see the person’s face, you’ll prefer the outline of that face. Each month of age, he begins to perceive the eyes, mouth or chin.
At first, the baby’s preference criterion is that it is visible, determined by the object itself, your preference will depend on the intrinsic and exceptional properties of this object.
In the second month, the preference criterion begins to be experience, babies see according to the meaning of the object, the cognitive system develops and then it can be determined whether a stimulus is new or interesting.
Another function that has not yet been fully developed and influences vision in the first few months is the ability to separate surface, object and background. It allows us to understand the world as it is and also to others.
Before five months, a baby is not able to distinguish objects from the surface and bottom, that is, if he looks at a jar of juice and, behind, a wall, he or she will think that the two objects are identical.
From the age of five months, they can differentiate whether the objects are sufficiently separated, the movement helps to achieve this differentiation. If these objects are static, at least for five months, they will not differ.
For objects that share surfaces, up to four months of age, the baby will also not know that they are two different objects, no matter if they have different colors. The principles of continuity, connected surfaces and common movement are relevant, the shapes generally say nothing.
In the first month, as mentioned above, babies begin to better understand the content of people’s faces.
The second month there is a lot of progress and they can become experts in the field, at two months they already have the high standard of follow-up, babies look at faces more than any other stimulus and begin to show preferences for familiar faces.
At six months of age, babies can now see and recognize a face despite variations in expression and even face or profile, they can already categorize by gender, differentiate emotional expressions, and respond differently to attractive or unreactive faces.
The vision may be the main protagonist in the development of perception in babies, the changes they are experiencing in their first year of life are amazing, the vision, among other things, is what allows babies to develop and gradually get to know the world around them.