O, Say Can You See? – 4 to 6 months

The visual system takes in information from the environment and interprets it. Vision works with other sensory systems and provides the information needed to have accurate motor responses.

When a baby is born, they have all the necessary pieces of the visual system in place, but they haven’t learned to use them yet. An infant’s vision begins to develop at birth, and they spend much of their early months of life learning how to see.

Birth to 4 Months

Four to Six Months
During this stage, babies become quite skillful with their eye-hand and eye-body coordination. They are learning to roll over, push themselves up, sit and scoot. They reach for almost everything they see. Babies learn to aim accurately when reaching for objects of interest, grasp them, and begin to direct the objects to their mouths. Babies’ brains have finished learning how to fuse the pictures coming in from both their right and left eyes into a single image. Both eyes should focus equally, and babies learn to focus quickly and accurately when switching between near and far distances.

Smooth visual tracking (eyes following a moving object) continues to develop. Swishing a scarf or other interesting object from side to side and up and down across babies’ field of vision helps strengthen this skill.

This is also the time they start to work on remembering things they see. They love the “magic” of peek-a-boo, when a beloved face disappears and reappears behind a set of hands.

And speaking of beloved faces, Researchers at the University of Minnesota in the 1970s found that newborn infants will tend to look at the borders of objects, especially high-contrast borders. Thus, when looking at a human face, a newborn will look at the hairline or edge of the face. By 2 months of age, infants begin to pay more attention to internal features of the face such as eyes, and mouth, and by 4 to 5 months of age they can and do recognize your face from all others in the world.

Here are some ideas to help stimulate your 4 to 6 month old’s visual development:
• Allow your baby to explore different shapes and textures with his fingers and mouth
• Give your baby lots of freedom to crawl, roll, move and explore.
• Hang objects across the stroller or above the crib.
• Place bright and interesting artwork across the room from the crib. Change it every few weeks.
• Play patty cake and peek-a-boo with your baby.
• Tape your baby’s Village art banners on the wall next to the changing table. Point and talk about them with changing diapers or getting dressed.
• Read, read, read colorful books to your baby!

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who not only thinks babies have a lot to get coordinated by 6 months, but is going to post about the visual development of a 6 to 8 month old tomorrow.