Many signals from the external environment can be disorienting for infants, so they choose the initial object of interest. Human faces represent a separate category of interest: e.g., parents and especially the mother. It is thought that the infant begins to explore the mother’s face as early as 12 hours after birth (Santrock et al., 2020). In addition, the faces of strangers are not of such interest to newborns.
Matching Voices and Faces
As they develop, infants perceive the world using all organoleptic systems. Particular attention is paid to the juxtaposition of visual and auditory information: for example, by 4 months of age, infants can associate the speaker’s voice with the speaker’s face (Santrock et al., 2020). Visualizing external information goes to another level: the differentiation between parents and others is now more explicit. The child distinguishes not only between male and female faces but can also determine the racial and ethnicity of a group according to the “friend-or-foe” principle.
Changing the Way of Receiving Information
The visual perceptual system is crucial to normal child development, and it changes as the child grows. Its changes are related to the amount of information coming in and how the child perceives it. Various studies have focused on recording eyeball movement (Santrock et al., 2020). It is the basis for determining which objects children pay attention to and how and why their orientations change.
Concentration on Faces Rather than the Environment
The different orientations are most likely related to how much information an infant can perceive from the environment. While at 3 months of age, infants perceive the general background without concentrating on people’s faces, the orientation changes by 9 months of age. It means that children can focus on facial expressions, emotions, and features (Santrock et al., 2020). At the same time, external stimuli (e.g., background in cartoons) are not a priority of interest.
Reference
Santrock, J. W., Deater-Deckard, K. D., & Lansford, J. E. (2020). Child development (15th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.