What a Newborn Baby Can See
Immediately at birth his pupils will adjust to let in more or less light, depending on the brightness of the room. His eyes focus best at the same distance at which your own eyes focus at rest, about 8 in/200 mm. the convergence of his eyes is very at first. He will fix you with a piercing look at one moment; the next he will lose interest, relax, and one eye will be gazing at the ceiling and the other at the window.
A baby’s brain develops fastest in there months before birth and the first year afterward. At birth the upper part of the brain, which controls all of what used to be called the “higher mental function,” lags behind the lower brain, which controls all the “automatic” parts of behavior. The newborn is particularly sensitive to two things; the human face and movement. If you dangle something in front of him and move it back and forth, he will watch intently, within a few hours of being born. But if you stop moving it, he will very soon lose interest. And although he is programmed to recognize a face (or as he sees it, a roundish disk with two darker spots side by side), it is interesting that mist mothers and fathers bob their heads about when talking to young babies, for this is what the baby needs to help him keep attentive.