[MUSIC]
Psychologists used to believe that the baby human's mind was one great
blooming buzzing confusion.
[SOUND] But the baby human comes into the world already equipped with
the capacity to think, reason, to learn about the world, and about itself.
At the moment, two week old Heather lives only in the immediate world of the senses.
Like all newborns she responds to a series of stimuli.
They have no meaning for her.
Play of light and dark from the window captures her interest.
Her eyesight is not developed yet so this is what she sees.
The patches on the wall seem to come alive and beckon her.
At this young age,
Heather has already embarked on the huge task of making sense of her surroundings.
Now her eyes turn to the bars of her crib.
They look like thick stripes, just the right size is for her eyes to discern.
[MUSIC]
>> [SOUND] >> But
what the baby human responds to most of all is the human face.
Heather is gazing at the most important face she's encountered so far.
At 12 inches what she see's are mainly contrasts of light and
dark, where the features are.
But her clearest view is from six inches away,
an easy distance to communicate love between mother and child.
It seems nature has prepared the baby human from birth
to pay attention to the face, as if saying look carefully.
Something that looks like this is going to be very important for your survival.
>> Hi there, okay are you all set?
>> A Daphne Maurer's Lab, Terry Louise is part of a group studying the phenomenon of
this attraction and how it develops in the first three months of life.
>> Here we go, are you ready?
>> Ten day old Dylan is shown a card with two images on it.
The right side has three blobs representing the rudimentary configuration
of the human face.
The left has the blobs inverted.
>> Good looking.
Very good.
>> Dylan is drawn to the image that resembles the human face.
But what is it that he's attracted to?
>> Careful, I might trick you.
>> To find out they show Dylan another card.
>> Okay, are you all set?
>> One side has the blurry image of a face and the other side was created to
represent only the light and dark contrasts of a face.
Dylan prefers to look at the side with a contrast of a face, which indicates
that its not the features themselves that the baby human reads at this age, but
the areas of contrast created by those features.
So what two week old, Heather is really fascinated with is the contrast
between light and shadow created by her mother's eyes, mouth and hairline.
>> Who's there?
>> But she doesn't know yet what they mean.
Back at the lab, six-week old Devon is shown the same card.
>> How about these guys now?
>> Unlike Dylan, he turns to the image that looks more like a face.
The other image no longer interests him.
So, what happened in those four short weeks that separate Heather and Devin?
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Researchers believe that this is when the baby humans' higher brain centers,
which are sensitive divisional stimuli, take over.
And that is what's directing Devin's gaze and
begins to give meaning to what he sees.
At the same time other regions of the higher brain centers
are preparing the baby human to think and reason.
These exceptional capacities are what set human apart from the rest
of the animal kingdom.
Gaven is eight weeks.
As he begins to interact with his environment,
the world around him takes on new meaning.
He looks at his mother with new eyes.
>> [INAUDIBLE] >> During these critical early weeks,
new neural pathways in the brain are forged.
The more things the baby human sees, the more this ability surges.
At two months of age, this is what Gavin's world looks like to him.
His life thus far has been a kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, sensations, and smells.
But he's now beginning to make connections between them.
>> Let's get this all changed for you.
>> He suddenly realized a remarkable thing.
>> There you go, all clean.
>> That the sound of the voice and the moving lips of his mother are related.
>> Good boy.
>> For the first time, he can put together sight and sound.
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Out of the chaotic flow of impressions,
he slowly realizes that the world isn't one thing.
He now begins to distinguish the amazing world of objects.