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The baby is still a week old, and almost any mother is convinced that the child, of course, recognizes her and practically communicates with her. Is it so? Moms want to believe this, but it’s not: face recognition in children does not appear until a few months later.
Only after 6 months the child can distinguish objects of perception: mother, nanny, rattles. So, a child of 7-9 months old reaches for a colorful top, grabs a bright toy and turns his head to his mother to the question: “Where is mom?”
Nevertheless, the newborn is not yet able to see and hear in our adult understanding. What does the newborn perceive? The newborn distinguishes smells, speech sounds (phonemes) and, apparently, the constancy of form.
Namely, if a rectangular object (for example, a book) is seen at a right angle, its image on the retina will be rectangular; if you look at the book from other angles, it will be reflected on the retina in the form of a trapezoid, but it will still be perceived as a rectangle …
Everything else that parents notice in their talented newborn only says that they want to believe it. “When he was born, as soon as I picked him up, he immediately recognized me!” — the young dad tells everyone enthusiastically. There is no need to dissuade this dad, dad with such fairy tales takes better care of the child, but seriously, the child at this time still does not even know how to properly focus his eyes. This develops later, over several months.
The possibility of an innate, unacquired preference for faces has aroused great interest, but subsequent research has shown that infants are not attracted to faces per se but to stimulus features such as curved lines, high contrast, interesting contours, movement, and complexity—all of these features. has a face (Banks & Salapatek, 1983; Aslin, 1987). Newborns look primarily at the outer contour of the face, but by 2 months the infant begins to pay attention to the middle of the face—the eyes, nose, and mouth (Haith, Bergman & Moor, 1977). At this time, parents may notice that the child begins to meet their eyes.
Up to 6 months, the child does not perceive the object itself, but only the complex stimulus familiar to him. For example, a baby, even 8-9 months old, will not recognize his mother if she approached him in an unusual way, for example, in a wide-brimmed hat. He does not pick up his beloved bear if he is dressed in a bright suit and a new hat. The perception of a small child is situational, coherent and global. However, these qualities of perception act very differently, depending on the perceptual task that the child is solving (L.A. Wenger).
What helps a child to recognize mom, dad and other objects faster? : if the object moves against the background of other stationary objects; : everything that the child feels, moves and throws, quickly becomes something separate and recognizable for him; .
If a thing is unfamiliar, children under 3 years old mainly pay attention to the color of the object. If children of the same age were presented with images of familiar things — a watering can, a bucket, a ball — then under these conditions 80% of children even 2 years old preferred the form: they picked up a blue basket for a yellow basket, a red one for a green bucket. The more children begin to use words, the more they begin to pay attention not just to color and shape, but to what they notice in an object with the help of a word.
But gradually his sensations become more clear. So, with age, sensory abilities improve: perception of color and depth, hearing acuity. Some early onset abilities then disappear and reappear a few months later in a more complex form. Whatever abilities a child shows, they improve with age, becoming more differentiated.
The features of the perception of children under 3 years old include the following:
Children of the third year of life can perceive colorless and even contour familiar objects. If the drawings are clear enough, children correctly perceive simple objects and their images: they select the correct pair in the lotto (“Give me the same”). Children perceive unfamiliar objects erroneously, sometimes relying on one feature that seemed familiar to them or on a secondary feature, including color, size, texture.
After 1 year 2 months — 1 year 8 months children correctly find an object by the word (“Give me a bear”) if they have already formed a strong connection between the word and this object. The older the child, the faster the word acquires a generalizing meaning. This is facilitated by referring the word not to one object, but to several homogeneous objects with changing insignificant features (elephants of different sizes, colors, textures, in different positions). In these cases, children easily recognize a new toy (or an image of an object) based on generalization and distraction (a large white elephant is not matched with a white pig of the same size, but a small brown sitting elephant).
From the end of the second year of life, children can usually correctly name a perceived familiar object in response to the question «What is this?» However, usually highlighting only some signs and not seeing individual details, the child often makes a mistake, calling, for example, a shepherd dog a wolf, a tiger cub a cat, and generalizing various objects according to random signs (for example, a muff, hair, a cat, he designates one and the same thing). the same word).
In the third year of life, a child, perceiving a picture with a simple plot, names each depicted object separately: “Girl, pussy” or “Boy, horse, tree”. Only towards the end of the pre-preschool age, as a result of exercises, do children begin to see the connections that exist between the depicted objects. Usually these are functional connections — a person and the action he performs: «The girl feeds the pussy», «The boy rides a horse.»
The child gets acquainted with space when he masters walking. However, the spatial characteristics of the objects perceived by the child remain for a long time merged with the content of the object itself.
Acting with objects, the child learns to look, feel, listen. Therefore, the older he becomes, the greater his experience, the less labor he spends on the perception, recognition and discrimination of objects, the easier the connection of the object with the word is formed. If for the correct choice of the first subject according to the named word (red moving beetle) for children from 1 year 9 months. up to 2 years, 6-8 repetitions are needed, then for the correct assignment of the word to the second subject, even more complex, and its choice among similar ones, only 4-5 presentations are needed. At the same time, the stability of the connections formed on the word and the correctness of differentiation in children after 2 years of age increase rapidly (N.G. Salmina, K.L. Yakubovskaya). The result of the exercises is also reflected in the fact that by the beginning of the preschool period, the child also perceives objects unfamiliar to him, independently finding the appropriate name for them on the basis of similarity with a familiar object (for example, an oval — «testicle», «potato»).
Congenital or acquired?
Regarding the development of sensations and perception, there have long been disputes, how much is it rather an innate or rather a socially determined process? Some researchers emphasize how enormous the role of the innate is: from birth, a child already knows a lot about the world. Other researchers, without denying innate moments, draw attention to the fact that the further development of perception is not a calm unfolding of what is already laid down from the inside, and not the formation of a new one from the outside. This is primarily the result of the child’s own activity. How much I have been active, so much I have developed. However, adults may well contribute to the development of the child’s activity.