Psychologists gain new insight on babies’ world

PSYCHOLOGISTS researching the attention babies pay to what they are looking at have discovered they are much more capable of organising their visual world than previously thought.

The study of 63 babies aged between two and eight months by the Economic and Social Research Council found they can group what they see in at least three different ways depending on its brightness, shape and proximity.

The attention infants pay to visual stimuli plays an important part in their mental development, affecting memory, motor skills, recognition of objects and other key skills.