Essay on Review the evidence that infants are born with visual preferences and consider how such preferences can equip them to process stimuli that they encounter in the world
The interest in the surrounding world and people in babies usually awakens through their eyes. Seeing the joy of parents to his/her reaction, interest of the child is growing even more. Thus developing into two important qualities: social attitude and own initiative. The ability to see creates three-dimensional world with surrounding subjects becoming real, have their meaning and perspective. In this essay I would like to discuss the evidence that infants are born with visual preferences and how it helps them to process the stimuli that they encounter in the world. The various fascinating studies are exploring infants vision and show how different is the visual system of the newborn to the visual system of a grown adult, how quickly it develops and how it helps infants to learn basic knowledge. Going to look at behavioural studies that help to produce some much needed evidence of understanding infants reactions to different visual stimuli and describe the visual stimuli that infants appear to prefer. The studies that help us to understand the significance of these preferences are very interesting and give us the unique opportunity to look at the baby being born with some basic intelligence.
The anatomy of the eye in newborn is undergoing significant changes in a process of body maturity.
The visual acuity of a newborn is much weaker than that of an adult. This visual impairment is caused by retina being in development. The retina is a complex organ that is responsible for carrying out very complicated functions. It consists of various types of cells, the main of which cons, rods and nerve cells. Rods are responsible for black and white or Twilight vision and also help to control the peripheral space on eye fixation point, cones sense colour and detail. Cons and rods under the influence of light form electrical impulses that are transmitted to the nerve cells. The density of cones and a secretion of cons towards the foveal area is only fully completed when child is about 11 years old. Optic nerves are very well developed at the time of the birth but lack of myelin coating or “insulation” causes the retinal information to travel more slowly and diffuse the information. Myelination of the optic nerves is more or less finished when baby is about three months old. The optic nerves from the two eyes form the optic chiasm and after it information goes through lateral geniculate nuclei, very complex structure that processes visual information at the base of the brain but it does the processing in more detailed way than it was done in the retina and reaches adult developmetal status only at about 12 month old. The lateral geniculate nuclei plays very important role of the switching station to the transmission of information to the Visual cortex, the highly complex structure that compares inputs from different receptive fields and develops for at least 6 months, but the full potential of the Visual cortex is not fully understood yet. As we can see the rapid development of the visual system takes place in the first few months of the newborns life and the very act of looking or watching stimulates its development. Vision in babies evaluated by reactions of tracking and fixation. The behavioural evidence is very important at this point as child is unable to talk or give us any type of informational clue and it is virtually impossible to predict they thinking pattern. In the early periods of development the child's behaviour is determined by complex stimuli and he/she organises it in response to this complex stimuli because he/she can not single out certain irritants yet, hence we relying on simple behavioural pattern to study child’s vision development.
Visual perception in infants is characterised by selective preference of different stimuli. Robert L. Fantz invented so-called “viewing chamber” monitoring, using this “viewing chamber” scientist was able to observe the eye movements and fixation of the baby's
