Stages of Development> Period of Infancy - Perceptual Development of the Infant

When a baby is born, it can sense the world (see, hear, smell, touch, taste), but it cannot understand things like adults do. Perception means turning simple sensations into organized ideas with the help of past experience and learning.

1. Early Abilities (Innate/Basic Skills)

• Babies can tell something is moving and follow it with their eyes (figure and ground).

2. Perception Grows with Experience

• Babies cannot organize and understand everything at first—their ideas about the world are not clear and are very simple.
• As they sense different things and grow, they slowly learn to know themselves and things around them.
• According to Piaget, babies do not know the difference between themselves and other things at first. They learn this from experience.

3. Learning and Motivation are Important

• Babies do not pay much attention to strangers or colors, even though they can see differences.
• A 6-month-old baby prefers a red bottle with sweet milk instead of a green bottle with bitter medicine.

• Babies are born with working senses, but must learn to organize and make sense of what they see, hear, and feel.
• Some skills (like recognizing faces) are inborn, others develop through experience.
• Both learning and maturation (body growth) help in perceptual development.