VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS

As eyesight and vision continue to develop – so does a baby’s understanding of the world around them. From patterns/meanings of things to motion path prediction to cause and effect relationships (both observed and intentional). The firing and wiring don’t stop, won’t stop.

Let’s help the baby by challenging the eyes with moving things and dive into how non-verbal communication via hand gestures can be useful.

AN OBJECT IN MOTION

Babies are budding physicists, developing their own laws of motion every time they watch an object at rest or an object in motion. Babies learn by watching. These observations also help train circuits in the brain in how to adjust the eyes, through mini muscle movement, to accommodate changing visuals and to stabilize what we see – during things like walking and running and playing sport.

The goal here is to look for ways to expose your child to how things move and interact through motion. The baby will see a lot of motion passively when they are in motion, so work in times when the baby is still and the motion of an object is the center of attention. These activities are for the eyes, so keep things moving slowly, and in the main field of view without having to move the head much. Larger, brighter, objects with more contrast to the background are likely good places to start.

Try This

Edges and Interactions

The brain relies heavily on defining objects by their edges or their shape. There are dedicated cells in the eyes whose only job is to determining the shape of things by “detecting edges”. To help with edges in motion, expose your baby to solid shapes that move. To show the baby how simple things interact – repeat but with the shapes interacting. High contrast, and solid colors help to tune into the edges and the interactions of edges. Anything with motion and objects touching/interacting works here. Gears, rotating shapes, pinwheels are examples of this and many baby toys feature these things, but the basic principles can be used to create your own experiences for the baby.

Side to Side, Up and Down

The eyes have specific cells that only sense motion left to right and right to left. The eyes also have specific cells that only sense motion up and motion down. The brain puts this information together to define the perception of motion that we see.

Look for ways to show things moving side to side and up and down. Swinging something back and forth by a string, or rolling a ball or toy car back and forth on a plate or tray or floor can create a number of possibilities to showcase objects in motion.

GESTURES AND “SIGN LANGUAGE”

First things first – let’s settle the “Sign Language” thing.

Human to human social communication prioritizes the face and the hands. A lot of brain mass is dedicated to those two things. In fact, when monkeys raised in a lab are denied seeing faces, the brain cells that detect faces rewire themselves to put importance on hands. Hands are next in line when it comes to gathering social information. When these monkeys are put back in social environments, where they can see faces, the brain rewires back to putting the importance on face processing. Hand gestures are deeply rooted in being a human and there is significant research backing gesture use as part of development. Gestures are so important that it’s actually hard to speak fluidly without moving our hands. Give it a try – sit on your hands and try to speak fluidly. It’s harder.

Interesting fact: Emojis attempt to recreate face/gesture meaning humans naturally use.

Sign language uses gestures to communicate spoken language. Just like the thousands of spoken languages that exist globally – there are over 300 “sign languages” in use across many of those spoken languages.

When we talk about “Baby Sign Language” with babies – we are generally drawing from the sign language system in that spoken language. If the native language is English, then we draw a few hand signs from American Sign Language (ASL). Sign Language, in general, is a very useful way to communicate more clearly and earlier in (hearing) babies and toddlers. There is some research that supports this, but it’s harder to measure – which is why I prefer to link hand sign communication to gesture use.

“Baby Sign Language” itself can be thought more of as a structured form of using gestures to communicate. Humans naturally use all sorts of gestures, starting young, such as clapping in excitement, pointing, lifting arms in air to be picked up, shaking the head yes/no, blowing kisses, or a thumbs up. Many communication gestures develop naturally and culturally – but there are ways to help make communication more efficient by putting in place a few basic sign language gestures.

Note: Many families like the idea of Sign Language, but few follow through. The challenge comes from either 1) getting overwhelmed of where to start and what to teach or 2) not being consistent enough across caregivers, often tied to trying to sign too much.

For success in American Sign Language (ASL) – start small with a few signs and be consistent. Research suggests sign language can start around 4-6 months (eyes are working well + window of opportunity for vision and language), but that it may take until the baby is 9 months to 15 months to sign back (when they have more muscle control or interest). Consider this an investment.

The key take away here is to spend some time using gestures with you kids. ASL provides a framework – some examples below, but you can and should use gestures with kids, be they made up or not.

“More”

Tap the finger tips together. Match with the word and action. Typically used to learn if a child is still hungry or thirsty, but can be used for anything where “more” makes sense. Start this one when solid food starts (around 6 months).

“All Done”

Twisting/Waving both hands in air. Match with the word and action. Used to signal that whatever is going on, they are done with. Typically used around feeding – to indicate being done – either them signaling or you signaling. If not “done”, maybe “More” is signed. Great to use for transitions of play – also worked with my dog too, but I’ve not dug into that research.

“Milk”

Open and close the fist like milking a cow. Match with the word and action. Often used for “liquid food” (formula/breast milk) in the early years.

“Please”

Rub chest with a flat open hand. Match with the word and action.

“Thank You”

Open hand touching chin then moving away and down – directed at the person being thanked. Manners related signs may be useful because in the future you can sign to the kiddo discreetly across a room as a reminder of manners. It’s fun to treat these kinds of gestures “family code”.

Other signs to consider could be for drinking water, needing help, needing a diaper change, feeling sleepy, asking for mom or dad or the dog or cat.

But the truth is – if you want to do full sign language as a system, it’s a commitment to a full language system. Alternatively, you can also make up your own signs for just about anything. It’s less pressure to view this as gesture based communication.

“Good Job”

The eyes are fascinating in how they work and how they send information to the brain to process a perception of reality or to recognize an object from moment to moment.

It used to be thought that 3 kinds of cells in the eyes simply took in light, projected that onto the back of the eye (the retina) and the brain constructed what we “saw”. Since the early 2000’s the understanding of how the eye works has evolved. It’s now known that there are 42 distinct kinds of cells in the visual system and all seem to have unique jobs in helping feed the brain the data needed to interpret what we see. While the jobs of many of the 42 cells are known, several are still a mystery, as it’s not exactly safe at this time or ethical to experiment on the living cells of a living human. This information is also so new that it hasn’t really spilled over into child development – another place where it’s hard to study. Scientific understanding isn’t perfect – it’s changing, adapting, and catching up all the time.

What is agreed upon is that all of these 42 cells contribute different information to the brain. Some focus on finding the edges of objects – where an object starts and stops – or sensing motion or color or how dim or bright it is. Of these cells, there are two types that might be of interest to Dads in helping to understand the experiences of babies. The first is in how we identify the shapes of things. The other in how we process motion and why these are important.

Edge Detection

The edge detection cells sense where objects start and stop. The brain relies heavily on shape to make sense of the world. To make it easier for the brain to process this type of information quickly – the edge detection cells put extra visual importance to the boundary of a shape vs the non-edge areas. In the image below – some people can feel how their eyes put more attention, focus, and meaning on the edges vs the middle of a solid colored shape.

In order to interpret edges near something with similar contrast or color, these cells also add in edge emphasis or boost, called Mach Bands. In the image below – you will likely see shadowing where each rectangle meets. Those dark areas do not actually exist – they are created by the brain to help with quicker visual processing.

Motion

Motion cells in the eyes sense edges that are moving, but they sense motion by breaking it down into how objects move left to right, right to left, up to down, and down to up – with specific cells covering specific directions only. As something is spinning or being twirled, all of these cells send signals to the brain where it adds the signals to interpret actual motion.

The importance of edge detection and motion cells is that not only in sending signals to the brain for processing, as their information is also used by the brain to send signals back to the muscles in the eye that stabilize the image as you walk or run.

It’s not tested or explored by science yet, but one hypothesis from this newer information could be that firing and wiring of motion and edges detection cells (high contrast images!) support how the muscles in the visual system develop and may help explain wide ranges of ability in vision.

The human brain does the best it can, and optical illusions help to show us how we may not always be seeing what others see or even what is happening outside of our senses. It’s often a matter of perspective, meaning, and biology.

The brain has to process a lot of information at any given time – so trade offs are made. Two of many trade offs are that 1) our brains emphasize what we put personal meaning and value on (which is learned and is based on our experiences) and 2) the highest resolution of information is in the center of your view, which is a very small portion of the view. Try it out – hold your thumb out at arms length – your thumb nail is about the size of what your eye can hold in full resolution. Everything else, as you move to the peripheral vision, is approximated and estimated and doesn’t have the crispness as that central area.

We learn the most from what the center of the eye senses, and build meaning from how we interpret what we see. Our focus and attention are what drive this. Bringing it back to babies, scientists have actually studied what happens when something moving violates what a baby expected or predicted to happen [YouTube, 2min 3sec]. They found that these kinds of situations seem to increase curiosity and interest in learning more about why these objects defied expectation. This is similar to how an incredible magic trick violates our knowledge of what’s supposed to be possible and makes us think.

All of this research has implications (and ongoing questions) in exploring, investigating, and designing experiences for children that may have beneficial future outcomes. For now, the foundation is that a variety of experiences and social connection help these baby physicists develop their own theories of the universe.

Oh and remember, sign language is a proxy for spoken language based communication – gestures are not… and regarding gesture based communication – there are several ways to communicate disapproval or angst through what some might consider an obscene gesture like flipping the bird. The history and meaning of the middle finger in general, but specifically in the structure of ASL, is fairly funny. But hey – if it’s not your thing… Zero F**** Given is an acceptable approach too (signed below).

This section has tidbits from around the web that are typically on Dads minds.

More on Sign Language

Overview – American Sign Language (ASL)

Book (for kids) – Baby Signs

Book (for adults) – Baby Sign Language Made Easy

Learn More: The Neurobiology of Vision

Book – We Know It When We See It
Breakthroughs in the early 2000’s have brought new insight into how the brain and eyes shape our perceptions of the world – and have shifted what we knew about the eye. If you enjoy well written science communication – this 2020 release is an up to date look into how we see.