Suppose that you just started working in a daycare for infants. You are concerned with providing auditory and visual stimulation that will be detectable and pleasant for the infants. (a) What are the visual capabilities and preferences of the neonate? Of the two-month-old? (b) What are the auditory capabilities and preferences of the neonate? Of the two-month-old?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(a) Neonates are likely to experience the world as a blur since their visual acuity is not very good, hence they are likely to prefer simple, highly contrasting visual patterns. Very young infants have a tendency to fixate on a single, salient feature or to scan in a limited way. Hence, the neonate probably cannot recognize its caretakers by face but will rely on other cues (smell, voice) and is unlikely to distinguish emotions by facial cues only. In contrast, the two-month-old has better acuity and is more likely to scan internal features of a stimulus. These gains are reflected in the two-month-old's greater interest in complex visual stimuli and prefer faces over other less complex stimuli. (b) Neonates hear much better than they see, are especially responsive to human voices, and even show a preference for their mother's voice days after birth. They can tell the difference between the vowels i and e from the second day of life. The difference between the neonate and the two-month-old is less dramatic in auditory capabilities, but discrimination does improve so that by three to six months, very similar speech sounds (e.g., da and ba) are readily discriminated. It is clear that infants are responsive to speech from birth and prefer it to most other sounds.