The early years of children’s lives are associated with intense brain development and acquisition of new skills, with perception maturity being one of the essential tasks. Although infants’ study is related to certain theoretical, practical, and methodological difficulties, there is a significant body of knowledge that attempts to explain which sensational and perceptual skills newborns possess. Moreover, robust conceptual models have also been presented. Among them, three theories, namely predictive processing, habituation, and information processing models, are highly important.
The predictive processing model states that successful orientation in physical and social surroundings depends on the brain’s ability to make and revise predictions about one’s own behavior based on incoming sensory information (Köster et al., 2020). Within the framework of that theory, it is argued that the human body strives to make the most accurate forecasts about the future. Therefore, the incoming data is constantly analyzed and reconsidered. Although that process may seem difficult for infants’ organisms at first glance, the studies found that newborns can construct causal links for their actions at least since they are one month old. For instance, the experiment conducted with 2-month newborns revealed that infants could logically connect the movement of the phone attached to their feet with the movement of their legs (Köster et al., 2020).
Acquiring new knowledge for predictive processing may take a lot of brain activity when the information is fresh or contradictory. However, habituation theory asserts that each time sensory data aligns with the previous experience, the body reacts less to a similar stimulus. Indeed, due to the limited abilities of a person to focus and maintain attention on various objects, as the information processing framework suggests, the habituation process seems to be a crucial part of survival. It helps to distinguish important information from non-important and allows reacting fast in various life situations.
Reference
Köster, M., Kayhan, E., Langeloh, M., & Hoehl, S. (2020). Making sense of the world: infant learning from a predictive processing perspective. Perspectives on psychological science, 15(3), 562-571.