Sensory development is a critical part of an infant’s growth, as it enables them to make sense of the world around them. Understanding the senses through which infants learn, including taste, smell, touch, hearing, and sight, can help caregivers create an environment that encourages the development of sensory skills.
Taste is the first sense to develop in infants, beginning in the womb. They can recognize five basic tastes, including sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami. Infants prefer sweet flavors and breast milk due to the amniotic fluid’s taste. A mother’s diet can also influence an infant’s taste preferences.
Infants have a well-developed sense of smell at birth and can identify their mother’s breast milk scent compared to others. They also quickly develop preferences for certain smells.
Touch is a crucial sense for an infant and is comforting, making holding, feeding, and cuddling essential for strengthening emotional bonds. Inadequate sensory stimulation can lead to developmental delays.
Infants prefer their mother’s speech and can distinguish between sounds from different directions. However, their speech discrimination becomes more refined over the first six months.
Vision is the least developed sense at birth, with infants born essentially legally blind. They have a preference for light and dark contrasts and human faces.
Making sense of the world is a challenge for adults, let alone children! Infants are
capable of making sense of the world from birth, and this perception increases as
their senses do. Caregivers need to provide an enriched environment that
stimulates the senses. This should utilise the abilities that are more refined at
birth, such as taste, smell, touch, and use them as a foundation for learning. The
less developed senses of vision and hearing need more stimulation and time to
function properly. Many of these forms of stimulation can be found in our
everyday environment, but we can also enhance the environment. To promote
sensory development, you can do the following:
- Provide a safe environment for exploration
- Provide safe materials that infants can explore using all their senses
- Call the infant’s attention to stimuli in the environment
- Provide frequent opportunities for social interaction
- Provide a variety of environments
- Move infants around the room during the day
- Be mindful of sensory overload and remove items when infants lose
interest
Here are a few ideas (and there there are lots each week at Baby College)
