What the World Looks Like to Newborns, Reconstructed by Scientists

by Monica Joshi

Newborn babies are cute, happy, inquisitive, slightly annoying, but most importantly, a pretty cool psychological mystery. What are they thinking? Why are they thinking it? What do they see? By combining technology, mathematics, and previous knowledge of the visual perception of infants, researchers have finally succeeded in showing to an adult audience how much of its environment a newborn baby can actually see.

According to the new research, a newborn infant can see its parents’ expressions at a distance of 30 cm. For the first time researchers have managed to reconstruct infants visual perception of the world.

How a newborn infant perceives expressions at different distances.

The results show that an infant of two to three days old can perceive faces, and perhaps also emotional facial expressions, at a distance of 30 centimeters. This corresponds to the distance between a mother and her nursing baby. However, if the distance is increased to 60 centimeters, the visual image gets too blurred for the baby to perceive faces and expressions.

The research is published in the Journal of Vision and was conducted by researchers at the Institute of Psychology at The University of Oslo in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Uppsala and Eclipse Optics in Stockholm, Sweden.

Professor emeritus Svein Magnussen from the Institute of Psychology:

“Previously, when researchers have tried to estimate exactly what a newborn baby sees, they have invariably used still photos. But the real world is dynamic. Our idea was to use images in motion."

In order to carry out the test, the researchers combined modern simulation techniques with previous insight into how infants’ vision works. They had a great deal of information about young infants’ contrast sensitivity and spatial resolution from previous behavioural studies conducted. At that time, it was discovered that presenting an infant with a figure against a uniformly grey background caused the infant to direct its gaze toward the figure.

Magnussen said:

“Figures made up of black-and-white stripes were used. By choosing a certain stripe width and frequency, the field would appear uniformly grey, and the child would not direct its gaze towards it. Changing the width and frequency to make up figures made it possible to determine the exact level of contrast and spatial resolution needed to make the infant direct its gaze towards the figure."

As in, the researchers had access to quite accurate information about newborn infants’ vision. What was unknown to them was the practical consequences of this information.

The researchers made video recordings of faces that changed between several emotional expressions. Then, they filtered out the information which we know is unavailable to newborn infants.

They then let adult participants see the videos. The idea was that if the adults were unable to identify a facial expression, then we can certainly assume that a newborn would also be unable to do so. The adult participants correctly identified facial expressions in three out of four cases when viewing the video at a distance of 30 centimeters.

When the distance was increased to 120 centimeters, the participants’ rate of identification were about what one could expect from random responding. This means that the ability to identify facial expressions based on the visual information available to a newborn baby, reaches its limit at a distance of about 30 centimeters.

Magnussen points out, more importantly, that:

“It’s important to remember that we have only investigated what the newborn infant can actually see, not whether they are able to make sense of it."

The study plugs a gap in our knowledge about infants’ visual world, which was left open for several decades. It may also help explain claims that newborn babies can imitate facial expressions in adults during the first days and weeks of their lives, long before their vision is sufficiently developed to perceive details in their environments. However, the researchers have left a whole other dimension open: the psychological perception of newborn babies during their first few formative days.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Illustration by Professor Bruno Laeng/ UiO.