Infants are born aware of their environment from birth. This suggests that at birth, infants' visual and auditory systems are intact and fully functional. This assignment will begin by describing the role and function of important parts of an infant's visual and auditory system. I will begin by discussing the visual system and how infants are limited by the development of their visual system. I will then continue to describe the auditory system and its limitations. I will draw on evidence to explain the characteristics of preferred stimuli, both auditory and visual, to demonstrate which stimuli would be best suited in a nursery environment. The visual system of newborns develops over an extended period of time, but develops significantly over time. first months of life. A newborn baby has limited vision during the first weeks of life due to underdevelopment of the retina, optic nerve, lateral geniculate nucleus and visual cortex. The retina contains rods and cones. These rods and cones help distinguish light from darkness. The rods provide black and white vision while the cones are responsible for color vision and fine details. In newborns, the fovea, in the middle of the retina, does not contain many cones. As the eye is no longer able to produce, the cones move most quickly toward the fovea during the first 2-3 months of life and allow the newborn to see more clearly. The lack of maturity in this area at birth suggests that the visual field of newborns is blurry and quite colorless (Hainline, 1998). The optic nerves communicate information from the retina to the brain to decode it. The optic nerves, although lacking their myelin layer, are all formed in the uterus before birth...... middle of paper ....... Infants also have the ability to discriminate between languages ​​at an early age, it is therefore clear that if the child is part of a bilingual nursery, the languages ​​used are on a regular basis. This will prevent infants from losing the ability to hear speech differences, which occur as they age. It can also be noted that from an early age, infants become sophisticated in their understanding of their native language.Atkinson (2000), cited in Slater and Oates (2005) p.102.Bahrick (2001) cited in Slater and Oates ( 2005) p.117.Furnald (1985), cited in Slater and Oates (2005)p.113.Hainline (1998), cited in Slater and Oates (2005) p.97.Singh et al (2002), cited in Slater and Oates (2005)p.113.Slater, A., Oates, J. (2005) “Sensation to perception”, in Oates, J., Slater, A. (eds.) Psychological Development in Early Childhood, Oxford, Blackwell/The Open University