Has there been any research about how babies percieve the world?

Asked by ParaParaYukiko (6116

) January 2nd, 2010

My sister has a three-month-old little girl, and her development is fascinating to me. The way she reacts to things, the way she smiles when she sleeps, what she looks at, all these things make me wonder: how do babies see the world? I have no memories from my infancy, and I don’t know anyone else who does, either.

So, does anyone have any information of scientific studies relating to perception of infants? This includes things like what they see, what they do and do not understand, and what they dream about. I would love to learn more about what’s going on in my baby niece’s head!

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6 Answers

“Can I put that in my mouth?...nope…Can I put this in my mouth?...yes….” etc.

J0E (13172

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The classic work on this came out in the mid 1980s, The Amazing Newborn by Klaus.

MagsRags (5769

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Oh good lord, yes. Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and Heinz Kohut all write on this, to name just a few psychoanalysts interested in child development. Babies are fascinating little critters.

wildpotato (15224

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Besides the Object Relations people mentioned in @wildpotato‘s post, there are also thousands of studies of perception in infants, including size constancy, shape constancy, pattern recognition (especially facial patterns) sound and language pattern recognition, spatial relationships, etc. etc,

dpworkin (27090

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Thanks guys. @MagsRags I’ll definitely check out The Amazing Newborn. Anyone else have some links they could post for some of these studies? I hope I’m not asking too much of you guys.

ParaParaYukiko (6116

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If you want a good non-scientific discussion of baby perception and development, you might want to look at Penelope Leach’s Your Baby and Child from Birih to Age 5. It is a childrearing and development handbook by a pediatrician but she goes a lot into how babies perceive the world and develope.

janbb (63199

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