Sensory Development in Early Childhood: Vision, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell

Babies are often described as fragile and helpless, but the science of early childhood development tells a very different story. From the very first moments of life, newborns are equipped with a sophisticated set of sensory capabilities that allow them to perceive, respond to, and make sense of the world around them. According to OpenStax’s Lifespan Development, healthy infants are born able to detect visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, and olfactory sensations – and as they grow, they become increasingly skilled at decoding these stimuli. Understanding how each of the five senses develops during early childhood is essential for parents, caregivers, and educators who want to support children’s learning, attachment, and wellbeing.

Newborns: born with well-developed senses 🔗

A common misconception is that newborns are passive recipients of the world around them. In reality, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia confirms that babies are born fully equipped with all five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch – though some of these are more refined than others at birth. Sensory development doesn’t start at birth either; many of these systems begin forming during pregnancy and continue maturing through the first two years of life. AbilityPath explains that sensory development also involves the way the nervous system receives input from the senses and forms appropriate motor or behavioral responses – a process known as sensory processing or sensory integration. A problem in even one sensory system can significantly affect a child’s overall health and development.

The development of vision 🔗

Of all five senses, vision is the least developed at birth. Britannica’s overview of infant perception notes that visual acuity in most newborns is estimated at approximately 20/400, meaning they can only distinguish fine detail at very close range. The womb provides little visual stimulation, so the visual system has had minimal practice before delivery. Newborns can focus on objects roughly 8 to 15 inches away – conveniently, about the distance between a mother’s face and her baby during feeding. They can detect light and dark but have limited color vision at birth. By two months, they can discriminate between basic colors, and full color vision typically develops between four and seven months of age.

Face preference and visual processing 🔗

One of the most striking aspects of early vision is the newborn’s preference for human faces. Research published in PMC confirms that newborns show a generalized bias to attend to faces and face-like stimuli from birth, even before they have had significant experience viewing them. This innate orientation to faces is thought to be driven by large-scale brain networks and plays an important role in social and cognitive development. As vision sharpens, so does the ability to use it purposefully. All About Vision notes that between two and four months, babies begin reaching for objects they can see – the first signs of eye-hand coordination. By five months, depth perception begins to emerge as both eyes start working together. This eye-hand coordination becomes increasingly refined and supports motor learning, spatial awareness, and eventually academic skills like reading and writing.

Visual motor processing 🔗

A study from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that newborn visual fixation ability is significantly related to visual-motor performance at both two and five years of age, as well as visual reasoning at five years. In other words, how well a baby can fix their gaze in those early weeks is an early predictor of later cognitive development. This makes the first year of life a critical window for visual stimulation. High-contrast patterns, slow-moving objects, and face-to-face interaction are all practical ways to support this development.

The critical role of hearing 🔗

Unlike vision, hearing is one of the most highly developed senses at birth. In fact, the auditory system begins functioning before birth – the inner ear becomes fully developed in the second trimester of pregnancy, allowing the fetus limited auditory experience in the womb. This means that by the time a baby is born, they already have prenatal exposure to sound, particularly their mother’s voice. Newborns prefer the sound of their mother’s voice over other female voices, a recognition that develops within the first week of life.

Hearing as the foundation for language 🔗

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia reports that newborns with normal hearing should startle at loud sounds, pay quiet attention to their mother’s voice, and briefly stop moving when a conversational-level sound begins. Infants also show sensitivity to prosody – the rhythm and intonation of speech – which helps them begin distinguishing one language from another. This auditory tuning is essential groundwork for language acquisition. It is estimated that serious hearing loss occurs in about 2 to 3 out of every 1,000 newborns. Crucially, without early screening or testing, hearing loss may not be detected until a child is over a year old, by which point speech and language delays may already have taken hold. This is why universal newborn hearing screening is now standard practice in many countries. Hearing underpins not only language, but listening skills, social-emotional development, and academic success.

The importance of touch 🔗

Touch is the most highly developed sense at birth. According to OpenStax, touch begins developing around week eight of pregnancy, with the fetus becoming responsive to pain, pressure, and temperature by approximately week thirty. At birth, a newborn’s hands and mouth are especially sensitive to touch, and reflexes like rooting and sucking are directly triggered by tactile contact. Touch provides the infant with spatial awareness, body awareness, and early motor learning – it is the primary means through which a very young baby explores the world.

Touch and emotional development 🔗

Beyond physical development, touch plays a foundational role in emotional bonding and self-regulation. A review in the International Journal of Psychiatric Trainees found that postnatal physical contact facilitates secure attachment, promotes maternal sensitivity and responsiveness, and reduces psychological distress in both infants and caregivers. Early tactile exchanges – holding, stroking, rocking – help regulate the infant’s physiological and emotional states. These interactions lay the foundation for co-regulation, where a caregiver helps a child manage stress through physical contact.

A well-researched application of this principle is kangaroo care – skin-to-skin contact between parent and infant. Research published in the journal Children shows that kangaroo care normalizes autonomic function, improves oxygen saturation, reduces cortisol (the stress hormone), and promotes weight gain. Florida Atlantic University research further found that consistent kangaroo care stimulates the left frontal area of the brain – linked to higher-order cognitive and emotional regulatory skills – and increases oxytocin (the bonding hormone) in both mothers and infants. The World Health Organization recommends continuous kangaroo maternal care for preterm newborns. For all infants, the quality and responsiveness of touch from caregivers shapes long-term emotional regulation, secure attachment, and social development.

Taste and smell discrimination 🔗

Taste and smell are among the earliest-developing senses, with both beginning to form before birth. As early as week twelve of gestation, the fetus begins swallowing amniotic fluid and can detect distinct flavors based on the biological mother’s diet. Newborns will show signs of recognizing those familiar flavors after birth, and many exhibit a preference for the specific tastes and scents they were exposed to in the womb.

Taste preferences in early childhood 🔗

Stanford Medicine Children’s Health confirms that newborns prefer sweet tastes – such as breast milk – over sour or bitter ones, and show a strong preference for human milk over formula. Full taste sensitivity typically develops between 12 and 19 months of age. Recent research also suggests that babies can detect savory (umami) flavors found in foods like cheese and tomatoes. As children grow, these preferences become more complex, shaped by cultural exposure, family food habits, and the variety of tastes introduced during early childhood. Research indicates that children exposed to a wider range of flavors in infancy tend to be more open to diverse foods later in life.

Smell discrimination from birth 🔗

A newborn’s sense of smell is remarkably acute. Experiments have shown that newborns reliably turn toward a breast pad scented with their own mother’s milk rather than one from another mother – demonstrating that smell helps guide feeding and builds early recognition of the primary caregiver. Babies are also soothed by their mother’s scent as early as one day after birth. They show a clear preference for pleasant smells and actively turn away from unpleasant or sharp odors. By around age five, children can identify many foods by smell alone. The deep connection between smell and memory also begins forming during this period, with early olfactory experiences leaving lasting impressions on preference and behavior.

Why sensory development matters for learning 🔗

Each of the five senses contributes to how a child builds knowledge. Michigan State University Extension emphasizes that combining the sense of touch with vision, hearing, taste, and smell in play experiences is foundational for building cognitive skills. When children explore objects using multiple senses simultaneously, they develop problem-solving abilities, spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and memory. Sensory experiences are stored as whole-body memories that become the starting point for abstract thinking as children grow. For educators and caregivers, this means that rich, varied sensory environments are not optional extras – they are central to learning. Providing opportunities for children to look, listen, touch, taste, and smell different materials in safe, age-appropriate ways directly supports their intellectual and social development.

It also means that delays or impairments in any single sensory system – uncorrected hearing loss, untreated vision problems, or limited tactile experience – can ripple across multiple areas of development. Early identification and intervention remain the most powerful tools available for supporting children whose sensory development may be off-track.

What do you think? Given how much sensory experience shapes early brain development, how might everyday caregiving routines – feeding, bathing, reading aloud – be reimagined as intentional sensory learning opportunities? And when a child shows signs of sensory sensitivity or delay, how early should intervention begin, and who should lead that process?

References

1. https://openstax.org/books/lifespan-development/pages/3-3-sensory-development-in-infants-and-toddlers
2. https://www.chop.edu/pages/newborn-senses
3. https://abilitypath.org/ap-resources/how-your-childs-sensory-system-develops/
4. https://www.britannica.com/topic/infant-perception
5. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2663531/
6. https://www.allaboutvision.com/eye-care/parents-kids/infant-vision/
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6705375/
8. https://ijpt.scholasticahq.com/article/124910-touch-a-review-of-the-infant-caregiver-relationship-in-the-neonatal-field
9. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11592606/
10. https://www.fau.edu/newsdesk/articles/kangaroo-care-study.php
11. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8250458/
12. https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/topic/default?id=newborn-senses-90-P02631
13. https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/cognitive_development_and_sensory_play