Your baby's use of vision to find their feed

When your baby was born, their reflexes will have ensured that they were able to feed, so they will have turned their head and opened their mouth when their cheek was gently stroked. As their vision develops, when they see a bottle or breast they will turn towards it ready to feed. 

Developing senses and making connections

Your baby’s senses started to develop before they were born, now, as your baby experiences the world, they begin to make connections between information that they receive from their senses and what is happening at that moment. They will gradually begin to associate seeing a particular person or object with what is going to happen (they are likely to make these connections with routines that occur frequently at first).   

How your baby processes and understands information

The development of your baby’s senses is not only concerned with the information that they receive from their senses but also how they process and understand this information. Through their experiences, your baby will make links between areas of the brain concerned with the information that they receive from their senses, so will link information from different senses with each other and with their memory.^[1] 

Vision helps your baby to link experiences

Your baby’s vision was blurred when they were born, but as the clarity of their vision is developing, their knowledge of what they see and how this links to a particular experience or event is also growing. Your baby will be beginning to associate certain objects with familiar, or routine events and as their understanding grows might respond to what they see rather than waiting for a touch to prompt them.  

Your baby was dependent on touch, and perhaps, smell to locate a breast or bottle for a feed, but now they will begin to look when it is time for a feed and will be less dependent on the rooting and sucking reflexes, which will be integrated soon.^[2] 

What they see, hear and smell will form even more connections  

Your baby’s vision will continue to become clearer, and they will gradually be able to see objects more clearly and focus on objects that are further away. Through experiences they will begin to link what they see with what they feel, smell and hear, and might begin to link particular people and objects with familiar routines or events.  

References: 

[1] Addyman, C (2020) The laughing baby: The extraordinary science behind what makes babies happy.  London: Unbound. 

[2] Goddard-Blythe, S. (2004). The Well Balanced Child: Movement and Early Learning. Stroud: Hawthorn Press.