Chapter 1. Newborn Sense Experiences

Synopsis

Human Development Video Activity
true
true
You must read each slide, and complete any questions on the slide, in sequence.
cerebral cortex
The folded outer layers of the brain covering the cerebrum that are critically involved in many complex functions, such as memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness.
dishabituation
The process of reversing habituation. The restoration of the physiological response to a stimulus that had previously dissipated because of habituation.
habituation
The process of becoming so familiar with a particular stimulus that it no longer elicits the physiological response that it did when it was originally experienced.
infant
A baby in the first year of life.
infants
A baby in the first year of life
Moro reflex
If a newborn is allowed to drop unexpectedly while being held, he will throw his arms outward while arching his back and then bring his arms together as if grasping something. The meaning of this reflex is somewhat disputed, and it disappears after 6 or 7 months of life.
nearsighted
The inability to see distant objects clearly.
neonate
A newborn child up to the age of four weeks old.
neonates
A newborn child up to the age of four weeks old.
neuron
A nerve cell that receives and communicates information throughout the body as part of the central nervous system.
neurons
A nerve cell that receives and communicates information throughout the body as part of the central nervous system.
occipital lobe
The posterior lobe of the brain. Visual signals from the retina are interpreted in the occipital lobe.
phoneme
The smallest sound unit in a human language that has the ability to distinguish meaning.
phonemes
The smallest sound unit in a human language that has the ability to distinguish meaning.
retina
The inner light-receptive surface of the eye that sends impulses via the optic nerve to the occipital lobe, where the impulses are interpreted into visual images.
rooting reflex
A reflex that helps a newborn find a nipple. When the cheek is stroked, the newborn turns his/her head toward the stimulus and attempts to suck on it.
synapse
The microscopic gap across which the axon of a neuron can transfer an electrical impulse to the dendrites of an adjacent neuron.
synapses
The microscopic gap across which the axon of a neuron can transfer an electrical impulse to the dendrites of an adjacent neuron.
Newborn lying on back with headphones on

Newborn Sense Experiences

Newborn lying on back with headphones on

Author

S. Stavros Valenti, Hofstra University

Synopsis

In this activity, you will explore the sensory world of newborns in their first year and some of the research on early newborn sense experiences.

REFERENCES

Eimas, P. D. (1985). The perception of speech in early infancy. Scientific American, 252, 66–72.

Johnson, M. H., Dziurawiec, S., Ellis, H., & Morton, J. (1991). Newborns’ preferential tracking of facelike stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition, 40, 1–19.

Kellman, P. J., & Banks, M. S. (1998). Infant visual perception. In R. Siegler & D. Kuhn (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol., 2 (5th ed., pp. 103–146). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Marlier, L., Schaal, B., & Soussignan, R. (1998). Neonatal responsiveness to the odor of amniotic and lacteal fluids: A test of perinatal chemosensory continuity. Child Development, 68, 611–623.

Russell, M. J., Mendelson, T., & Peeke, H. V. (1983). Mothers’ identification of their infant’s odors. Ethology & Sociobiology, 4, 29–31.

A Newborn Awakens to a New World

Close-up of a father looking closely into his baby’s eyes

What does a newborn experience in the first moments of life? This may seem like an impossible question to answer because, after all, babies cannot talk. However, research over the last 50 years has revealed that the sensory experiences of newborns, including sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and the sensations that come from moving their own bodies, are vital tools for gathering information about the people and the world around them. Touch, smell, and taste function very well at birth. Hearing and vision are less well developed in newborns and need time outside of the mother’s womb to reach their fullest potential.

What Do Babies Feel?

Newborn lying on stomach about to get a shot in the thigh

Newborns are born with highly developed reflexes, many of which are designed to help them survive in their new world outside of their mothers’ wombs. Some reflexes are stimulated by touch, such as the rooting reflex in which the baby turns her head toward the source of a touch on the cheek in hopes that it might be a nipple! Other reflexes are stimulated by a sense of the position of the body, such as the Moro reflex in which the baby reaches outward with his arms while arching his back in response to a sensation of being dropped.

Just watch any newborn baby react to a needle prick during a medical examination, and you can see that, indeed, babies can feel pain. Newborns are sensitive to changes in temperature, touch, and movements of their own body from the very first day of life. These sensitivities increase over the next few days.

What Do Babies Smell?

A mother is holding and smiling at her newborn.

Infants sense touch, temperature changes, and position changes at birth. Taste and smell are also well developed from the start. For instance, infants show preferences for some smells. A newborn clearly does not like foul smells, such as vinegar, rotten eggs, or ammonia. He scrunches up his nose when exposed to these odors.

Breastfed infants can recognize their own mothers by smell alone. When given a choice, they will turn their heads toward pads that were previously wiped under their mothers’ armpits or breasts and away from pads with the smell of other breastfeeding mothers (Marlier, Schaal, & Soussignan, 1998). Sensitivity to odors is a two-way street since mothers also can tell their own babies from smell alone (Russell, Mendelson, & Peeke, 1983).

What Do Babies Taste?

Infants seem to have a sweet tooth even before they have teeth! While taste is one of the most developed senses at birth, how individuals feel about different tastes does evolve over time. There are many tastes, such as certain vegetables, coffee, or tea, that infants and young children cannot stand but grow to like or even love as adults. Taste does appear to have had an evolutionary function, so its basic roots likely aided in survival at some point in human history.

Play the video to watch Lilly’s facial expressions in reaction to different tastes.

Question 1.1

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Correct! Lilly’s facial expression tells the caregiver if she likes the taste or not. Historically, taste has been a very basic way for a newborn to determine if the food is safe to eat. To infants, desirable tastes are likely sweet foods full of energy while undesirable tastes are likely foods that have gone bad.
Sorry. Lilly’s facial expression tells the caregiver if she likes the taste or not. Historically, taste has been a very basic way for a newborn to determine if the food is safe to eat. To infants, desirable tastes are likely sweet foods full of energy while undesirable tastes are likely foods that have gone bad.

What Do Babies Hear?

Newborn lying on back with headphones on
Infants are particularly sensitive to sounds that humans make. We can tell that a newborn has heard a sound because of changes in facial expression, turning of the head or eyes toward the source of the sound, and/or changes in heart rate.

Hearing sensitivity improves over the first weeks of life. From their first moments, neonates respond to a wide variety of sounds. At birth, they can hear words spoken at a normal conversational level, but they cannot hear a whisper. They can distinguish among various sound pitches at birth, and their ability to distinguish small differences in tones gets better during the first year.

One of the most impressive characteristics of newborns’ hearing is how sensitive they are to small changes in human speech sounds. For example, they can hear differences in stressed syllables in a word, such as “ma-MA” versus “MA-ma.” They can distinguish the difference between happy-sounding, sing-song speech, such as “Good baby, there you go,” versus angry-sounding, staccato speech, such as “No! Stop that!” Interestingly, infants generally prefer a lullaby-type song to adult songs.

Babies even notice variations in syllables differing in only one sound, such as “pa” versus “ba.” This is an important skill because later when they learn to speak, we want babies to “pat,” not “bat,” the cat. Every spoken language is composed of speech elements called phonemes, such as the /p/ in “pat” or the /b/ in “bat.” Becoming a native speaker and listener requires that the infant discriminate among these basic speech elements.

Discriminating Sounds

Close-up of newborn staring at parent out of frame that is handing newborn a pacifier. When the sound changes, the image changes to same newborn looking directly at camera.

Young infants can discriminate most of the phonemes used in speech and miraculously can even discriminate sounds that are not used in their own native language for the first 6 months or so. Compared to older infants, children, and adults, newborns and young infants are sensitive to a broader set of phonemes (Eimas, 1985). Consider that this extra sensitivity helps infants learn any language no matter what phonemes are used. Over time, babies become fine-tuned to just those phonemes that they hear every day.

How are researchers able to assess a newborn’s ability to discriminate speech sounds? Researchers have used the habituation-dishabituation technique. Infants are given a special pacifier to suck. If they suck quickly, they will hear a repetitive series of sounds, such as “pa-pa-pa-pa-pa.” Infants seem to enjoy turning on this new sound, but they get bored and demonstrate habituation as they tend to stop sucking quickly as if the sound is no longer stimulating. If, without warning, the sound changes from “pa-pa-pa-pa-...” to “ba-ba-ba-ba-...,” infants tend to begin sucking quickly again as if their interest in the sound has been renewed. In this instance, their sucking demonstrates dishabituation as the introduction of a new sound has revived their interest.

Click to the next screen to hear a simulation of this speech discrimination experiment.

Discriminating Sounds

Close-up of newborn staring at parent out of frame that is handing newborn a pacifier. When the sound changes, the image changes to same newborn looking directly at camera.
Click photo to hear the sound.
Click photo to hear the sound.

What Do Babies See?

Vision seems to be one of the least developed sensory systems in newborn babies. Newborns have very little color vision at birth. They probably can only distinguish among high contrast, bright colors, such as black and white. By 3 or 4 months of age, an infant can distinguish more colors and different shades of the same colors.

The reason for such poor color and detail among newborns is the immaturity of the sensory cells in the retina of the eye and of the neurons of the vision centers in the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex. As new synapses are formed and as these emerging brain circuits are sculpted by experience, vision will steadily improve over the first year. By their first birthday, infants may likely see as clearly as adults.

Vision is not just about recognizing what objects are and where they are. Vision is one way to know what things are doing. Newborns are particularly interested in objects that move. They follow moving objects and lights and prefer to look at moving, rather than stationary, objects.

What Do Babies See?

An animation starts with simple vertical black and white stripe pattern that move to the right and continues.  For this animation, the caption reads “Babies eyes follow this pattern.” The animation then switches to thinner black and white stripes that move in the same way.  At this point, the caption switches to read “Babies eyes do not follow this pattern.”

Newborns’ eyes are not sensitive to low light levels and do not respond well to many different colors. Newborns’ vision is very blurry especially for distant objects. With vision rated at 20/400, babies can see an object at 20 feet no better than an adult with perfect vision could see the same object at 400 feet. Newborns are very nearsighted. Throughout the first year, infants’ abilities to see distant objects gradually improve.

How do we know anything about infants’ eyesight? And furthermore, how do we know that infants’ eyesight is so poor? One research technique is based on the fact that the human eye will move reflexively to follow movements. If you show humans of any age a moving pattern of stripes, the person’s eyes will follow the movement, dart back to the center, and repeat the cycle over and over again. These movements are a type of visual reflex that will occur as long as the visual system can “see” the stripes (Kellman & Banks, 1998).

Click on the picture to start just such a moving pattern of stripes, and consider the visual reflexes of a baby younger than one year.

Question 1.2

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Correct! The infant’s visual system lacks acuity, the ability to see fine details in images, for much of their first year of life.
Sorry. The infant’s visual system lacks acuity, the ability to see fine details in images, for much of their first year of life.

For Babies, What’s In a Face?

Close-up of a father looking closely into his baby’s eyes

There is something about a baby’s face that captures our attention, but did you know that faces also capture the attention of newborn babies? This surprising fact has been demonstrated in several experiments. When schematic drawings of a face are slowly moved from the center of a newborn’s vision field to the side, newborns display the greatest amount of head and eye tracking movements in response to the more face-like drawings. A schematic face with scrambled features or a blank oval will also be tracked, but not with as much movement as the drawings with face-like features in their proper positions (Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, & Morton, 1991).

Does this mean that newborns have a built-in ability to recognize faces? It is probably more likely that their visual system is prepared at birth to respond to face-like elements, such as two blobs aligned horizontally with a single blob below all contained within an oval shape. This built-in response may ensure that infants spend time looking at faces and learning about them. After a few days of seeing, babies begin to prefer their mother’s face to the face of an unfamiliar woman. During the first years, babies can discriminate some facial expressions, such as a happy face versus a sad face. By the end of the first year, infants seem to understand what some facial expressions mean, and as a result, newborns will look longer at a happy face than at an angry one.

Newborns Are Ready to Learn: Final Thoughts

The senses are a baby’s connection to the world, and that connection is present from the first minutes of life. Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and vision (to a lesser-extent) are the tools with which the newborn begins to learn about objects in the world.

What will a baby learn about in the first days of life? Babies seem to find some objects very interesting because they move, make special sounds, are close by, have a familiar odor, and contain intrinsically attractive visual features, such as two blobs in a horizontal row and a blob underneath. These objects, of course, are their caregivers, and the sensory systems help the baby first learn about important people and later, about important objects and places in the world.

Question 1.3

buR3gVScAy+zq2ltThxA6c2V+m1VmM7beleF9BgkgITLQu5l6/PnlQGazlCqxMwM2CzZv9HPVsVwBYva2BNkCCrsCrLk9FLZzHXc+Qt1qJbcW5zdpFWnxPgQhHc4vVGireeMeoxjoa8kAyyK3lzvrxq6r0bIKOoWvu0FuySY9f1C9KPe8UH68MsN7Ej/0APYu0Y0F/88wC3WYIhqYisJWsjX4EIqfL74W9VfleJHETfcjWSf80S+IQ==
Consider a newborn’s response to touch, to being held and the position of her body, the sounds that she hears. When a newborn is held close to the caregiver, the baby more easily hears, sees, and smells that person. The soft, musical sounds that a caregiver makes attract a baby’s attention and help the baby to become familiar with the sounds of language. Exaggerated expressions of the caregiver help the baby learn about people.

Assessment: Check Your Understanding

A mother is holding and smiling at her newborn

Question 1.4

+vPM51oKbGgo4vlZYOS1pipAnDpqL75B4qLmItVO7Gfz6/3j0FnTqBbeASK8x5rhMoycdkJ3MZkqWnrZe769VxnZCWWYO4gXhgYTAXVvDqXliLGNJe1WKSAk4n9dLiDn/CrCjR8zjsptNckFXx1CebcYZDFofnH6eFaPMe1VTAPUFtXYE4H9LWoEXvXwlOo+msgWy9vj07k3YcwZz2x/bTsrWToChgtO68gNFZ6Aeco=
Correct! Newborns are sensitive to changes in temperature, touch, and movements of their own body.
Sorry. Newborns are sensitive to changes in temperature, touch, and movements of their own body.

Assessment: Check Your Understanding

Newborn is looking directly at camera

Question 1.5

0QUXU91YnrnUQtZ/sAZhY43Qohz1Sjkw2kFPfBNkv0PYIvHxTDXagQdISIVWWlwnHLmRcbR5CdDHzWuJrOsgTyfgRs044WL8nRkYdcwZBl81sgfVPbVVczWCaP4KXwKCJPPwzNjUyEMSE1S0sH01Wg6Or+4odhXFcVp6P9BD8gx15wTwrtSxkahOEyRy4dm1kOewBgb8XxXg7m0xzluqIQndsfiVyU759auDsThOrFsd9408Nx2leBRwTuK87aT9dgdWNky3nMbLVZIZMwtphq45iXFwGIcY8H/6Eic4kyG1S7NTmmVOmuQ/Wamnd6fy2vLrwNgi3bY/CQRPM5vCi8ItgYg=
Correct! Newborns clearly do not like foul smells, so they will scrunch up their noses.
Sorry. Newborns clearly do not like foul smells, so they will scrunch up their noses.

Assessment: Check Your Understanding

Close-up of a father looking closely into his baby’s eyes

Question 1.6

7vbcxrd+Wasu6zE0Ld3iVt4ySJ4ZRMlJrl81ovinzZANWk8ecFneCZDltnBGfnTCRduiI74UwvioXKfzFVDwwJBVfjPQV7UZr9J4cEsqIhezRuT3ou0F2z79ZXp+hTdL8G2jB9QeusG+AqhUnb95BzYzMl0/rJHPubgXUrnDKuDJgEAceRU8FVY4782kkfKjyQaRPqU39ejJBdCXqML4fZ6H3JSXdb8Cf9fom7iOuG24SNHqnWX1d59MNncYcBoCsw8U5ccbOcYsawl6QrgQ6LHLgn1PIyCQVE4PiEgcEzxJJsK+LgkmSz4jltkkU/6jr2kQsGzOJK8=
Correct! A baby will become bored with a repeated sound demonstrating habituation.
Sorry. A baby will become bored with a repeated sound demonstrating habituation.

Assessment: Check Your Understanding

Close-up of newborn staring at parent out of frame that is handing newborn a pacifier.

Question 1.7

S6u20RqmqjqjJpRdSDIrM2eu5hi6r5/1Ee2cPpeOpcmcYsYPZV/OVC867ZXEp0teJugNG0rH+C/rabMHQB0JSttVHjBeh6P/2jIIx+yeLW36LlF73sdE5A28KUTZNKUnzWDJm+KrfH5t6p8xGLdQiBEZIt412pGsOYrHxb77tYVx+p5iMpPipYQdVygSQKlY5P/VM+hiuWfPEHEpdDy/Bmz0zEqO3OIYwyaL4WpCjXLGqGgt45pWOXlJsp1fDEGU4V2lkIjSTjeGkzZURJEk/9dXffwGUuW3pH+SOqOM+Wga0FaIwPIaEvASE44WhzI8+6aYZ83B0xYAaOgDQK/cdYgae44RUXxRLbpwPbsPZNsNx73FyxyJvw==
Correct! Neonates do not have good color vision.
Sorry. Neonates do not have good color vision

Assessment: Check Your Understanding

Newborn lying on back with headphones on

Question 1.8

LoxZilnA/qegodf7zbONyP1WSZd4lDxrnVIEnhBmlKak8gGi6dxXnOM+zgQLDfKseeHDKD7TCOTh2Rnorqs1qUSPcaY8XPVjUjUj1Mumvshgmp/SMqiAOkgWBl01NnKWKukLNhDE2pUvEnL470cyvMkicVHmNdB1iMtRMUnxbSTWPnSExDH0NICHEh1OfeR+
Correct! Vision is ta newborn’s least developed sense, but it gradually improves over the first year.
Sorry. Vision is ta newborn’s least developed sense, but it gradually improves over the first year.

Congratulations! You have completed this activity.Total Score: x out of x points (x%) You have received a provisional score for your essay answers, which have been submitted to your instructor.