What does your newborn know?

Newborn babies just seem to cry, eat and sleep, don’t they? But does your new arrival know more than they can show you? We've looked at some of what researchers think newborn babies understand and what this tells us about how they learn.

How do we know what your baby knows? 

Past research into child development focused on observing babies and young children and coming up with ideas about how they develop and learn. Standardised tests were also used to help researchers understand what babies and children comprehend. Much of this information still influences our understanding, but there's always more to learn!

Modern approaches to understanding what a newborn may comprehend

In recent years, there's been a growth in other approaches to understanding what babies know, using methods such as tracking what babies look at: when a baby sees something unexpected they look at it for longer, suggesting that they notice change.

Researchers are now also able to measure activity in a baby’s brain and from this see how they respond to different situations and events.

This change in research approach could shine a light on very young babies: rather than having very little awareness of what is happening around them, are they primed and ready to find out about the world? Maybe your newborn knows more than it seems!

What your newborn sees, recognises and hears

Your baby’s senses started to develop before they were born, and they use these to learn about the world around them. Their vision is less developed than other senses when they are born. They focus best on things that are close to them – around 20 to 30cm away; babies are particularly interested in looking at faces and your newborn will recognise your face.  

Babies have mature hearing from around 35 weeks' gestation, and when your baby was born they already knew your voice and other familiar sounds. Babies recognise the language that is spoken by their family – not only voices, but also the patterns of language, so they're likely to respond more to a story that has been read to them before they were born than to a new one.

Their 3D vision and sense of quantity!

Newborn babies don't develop control of their body and the link between what they see and distance for a few months. But studies suggest that they will look at an actual object for longer than a picture of the object, so have a sense of 3D vision soon after they are born.

Your baby can also link information from their senses and some researchers suggest that they will have an understanding of quantity. Newborn babies have been found to look for longer at a group of objects that has the same number of objects in it as the number of sounds that are played to them while they are seeing the objects. This suggests they can match quantities as they connect the number of sounds and number of objects in a group. It is thought babies' understanding of quantity relies on a significant difference in quantity between groups, so they seem to notice differences when one group is at least three times bigger than another.  

What they smell and recognise through touch

Newborn babies can identify familiar smells, and they recognise their mother’s smell as soon as they are born. They can use touch to recognise an object: in an experiment, babies were given an object to hold several times. When they were shown two objects, they looked for longer at the object that they had not held, suggesting that this was new and interesting to them.  

Are they starting out on their world journey already equipped with knowledge we can't yet see?

They could well be. Your baby's brain will change rapidly in the first five years, with neural connections being formed and strengthened by their experiences as they use their senses to learn about themselves, people, places and objects.

But right now, your newborn might know more than they can show you – research is finding out more all the time! As they grow, your baby will build on these already amazing foundations, make links between their experiences and continue to learn new things every day.  

Find out more: 

Streri A, de Hevia M, Izard V, Coubart A. 2013. What do we Know about Neonatal Cognition? Behavioral Sciences. 2013; 3: 154–169. 

Conkbayir, M. (2017) Early Childhood and Neuroscience. Theory, Research and Implications for Practice. London: Bloomsbury.