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Vision of Newborn
Once upon a time babies were believed not capable of seeing. However, in the past several years studies have shown that even newborn babies can see.
- Full-term newborns can recognize their own mother's face as early as four hours after birth.
- They can see mother's face from about 10 inches from baby's face.
- When they look at mother's face, they can see first the outline of the face, then look at the eyes and mouth.
- Newborns are attracted to sharp outlines and dark contrast. If the pattern is dark, they look for light areas; if it is light, they look for dark areas.
- Babies can recognize red, blue, and yellow.
- Babies can look at particular picture or pattern and they can express preferences.
- They prefer to look at pattern of circles and stripes than plain ones. They also prefer complex patterns with more elements.
- Babies love to look at the parents face.
- They are attracted to movement. If there is a moving object, they are apt to focus on it.
- The ability to focus on objects occurs mainly during the quiet alert state.
- A crying or drowsy baby can become quietly alert if something interesting catches their eyes.
- Newborns are able to process visual information, remembering what they have seen.
Newborn Hearing
Fetuses had been observed as early as 25th week of pregnancy to startle at loud sounds. No wonder at birth newborn do really hear well.
- Newborns can distinguish types of sounds, loudness, pitch, and different voices.
- They prefer high pitched voices. Parents instinctively use high pitched voice when they first talk to their baby soon after delivery.
- Babies instinctively prefer to listen to their mother's voice over other women's voice.
- Newborn respond to sound coming from inanimate sources. When a bell is rung, babies turn their eyes then their head to the direction where the sound come from. However, when sounds are mechanical they easily lose interest listening to it.
- Since most sound penetrate the abdominal wall of the mother, when the fetus hears music they do remember it when they are born. This is one reason why many great composers had parents who were musicians.
- In a study done by Dr. DeCasper, he had 16 pregnant mothers listen to The Cat In The Hat and a poem called "The King, the Mice and the Cheese." During the last six and half weeks of pregnancy, each mother was asked to read aloud twice a day, one of these children's stories to her unborn baby. Each fetus had about five hours of listening time to the same story until birth. Three days after birth, the babies listened to these stories with a headphone and a special pacifier that can detect the rate of their sucking. Amazingly, 15 of the 16 babies sucked at a rate to receive the story they had heard their mothers read over and over again.
- Newborn babies gets confused when they hear their mother's voice coming apparently from another woman's face.
- Babies prefer positive mood (soft and melodious) to negative angry voice (sharp, strong, abrupt).
- During the first six months babies can respond to different sounds of any languages. However, after six months old, they prefer to hear the sound of their native language that parents have been speaking since their were a fetus.
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