ABSTRACT
Until recent times the majority of theories of visual perception have emphasized the extreme perceptual limitations of the newborn and young infant. For example, the “father of modern psychology” William James claimed (1890, Vol. 1, p. 488), in one of the most memorable phrases in developmental psychology, that “the baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion”. Piaget (1953, 1954), and Hebb (1949) also argued that visual perception is exceptionally impoverished at birth and suggested that its development is a consequence of intensive learning in the months and years from birth. No-one would doubt that considerable learning about the visual world has to take place, but research over the last 30 years has given rise to conceptions of the “competent infant” who enters the world with an intrinsically organized visual world that is adapted to the need to impose structure and meaning on the people, objects and events that confront them.
