The cognitive skills during early infancy are not random – they facilitate the connection of the child with the environment – both with people and with object. The studies usually centre around perceptive abilities, particularly – the development of vision.
Perception goes through explosive development during the first six months – from very limited at birth to similar to that of adults. It has been suggested that it is the launching pad for all other abilities. The child has an active role in this development and it can be supported in the process. It is important to distinguish between perceptive abilities and the superior cognitive abilities such as directing attention, interpretation of the perceived information, etc.
There is a certain predetermination to the stimuli that evoke reaction – the ones important for human survival count with genetically programmed responses, the also attract more easily the attention (eg human voice).
In the beginning, attention direction is controlled by the characteristics of the stimuli – small babies can get frustrated is overstimulated, because they cannot avert attention even if they needed to. Gradually, voluntary attention direction and personal preferences take over.
Modalities of perception are interconnected and coordinated upon birth. A child is sensitive to the mother’s voice, smell, taste and appearance. The presence of the mother is quickly associated with safety, relaxation, reduction of pain and stress, satisfaction – this then gets coded in the brain and hormonal production chains, so that a child reacts to scary stimuli less if the smell of the mother is present, for example. Similar attachment happens on the side of adult carers, which is genetically determined, innate reaction to small children.
Visual Perception
A newborn baby can look at an object in front of their eyes and can follow it if it moves slowly in their field of vision. Тhe eye movement is jerky – smooth eye movement appears around 2m after birth.
Vision sharpness is not great, the clarity of the objects develops quickly as the child’s eyes learn how to focus. Because of this in the first month of life, babies explore mostly the external edges of objects. Already in the second month, they can explore the interior of objects: eyes and mouth of face, for example.
Visual preference goes to faces, brilliant stimuli, contrasting images, moving stimuli, objects producing sounds. In the first months, the black and white simple contrasting images are preferred. The complexity preference increases with age – even when it is too complex for them to process, they may still prefer it if the gap is not too wide between their processing abilities and what is required.
Perception of events (movement) and depth
There is continuity in the way an object is perceived – movement and object are assumed to be connected. They are able to form expectations (the train coming out of the tunnel should be the same as the train that went into the tunnel in the first place). Depth has been tested after 6m of age as it is related with the direction of movement on behalf of the child. Depth is also a matter of experiential learning.
Auditive Perception
Exists and connects with vision at birth. Very sensitive to sound intensity. Makes very detailed difference in the sounds as they don’t have habituation by default. This is why the can learn many languages and discriminate between different voices upon birth.
They focus on sounds similar in frequency to human voice.
Sensorial Perception
Taste is present at birth – also for premature babies.
Ways to study the cognitive skills
Observe what the child does, if she looks, tries to reach, smiles in its presence, avoids. Register the time she is looking or exploring the objects. Present two stimuli (eg. coloured picture and black & white picture) and see which is preferred, where does the attention go and how this changes over time.
Test habituation by presenting the same object or event to the child several times – the more times the child sees it, the less the fixation time would be, the less the interest shown. When the same object is represented in a different way (different colour circle, triangle upside down, etc.), we can see whether the child reacts as if it is a new object or understands it is the same object. This will change over time as the child gathers more experience and develops object permanence.
More sophisticated methods can be used to see whether the child has acquired the ability to predict movement. For example, dropping the ball in a way that the dropping happens visibly, then the falling happens behind a screen – then track where the child expects the ball to be. Similar observations can be done with horizontal movement.