When a baby is born, it lacks the ability to perceive the world in three dimensions. This skill develops early in infancy. Newborns cannot yet perceive height, depth, dimension, or pictorial cues.

When a baby is born, its visual system is not fully developed, which means their ability to perceive depth and dimension is limited. Depth perception is the visual ability to perceive the world in three dimensions (3D) and to judge the distance of an object. This skill is crucial for understanding the spatial relationship between objects and navigating through the environment.

A newborn's vision is quite blurry, and they see best at a distance of 8 to 12 inches – just about the distance to a parent's face when holding the baby. As infants grow, their visual system continues to develop. There are several stages and milestones in the development of depth perception:

1. Around 2-3 months, babies start following moving objects with their eyes and reaching for things, which is an early sign of depth perception beginning to develop. 2. By about 4-5 months, infants can see more details and start to develop better depth perception due to improved eye coordination. 3. Between 5-8 months, babies improve in their ability to accurately grasp objects, which requires a sense of three-dimensional space.

Many factors contribute to the development of depth perception, such as the growth of the eye structures, the improvement of brain processing, and the experience gained through physical interaction with the world. Babies also rely on several visual cues to perceive depth:

- Binocular cues: This involves both eyes working together to perceive depth. As each eye sees a slightly different view of the world, the brain combines these views, allowing us to judge distance. - Monocular cues: This can be perceived with just one eye and include size perspective, texture gradient, interposition (objects blocking each other), linear perspective, and motion parallax (objects moving at different speeds across the retina). - Kinetic cues: When an object moves closer or further away from us, the motion provides information about the object's depth.

Over time and with practice, infants develop the ability to integrate these cues and gain a mature depth perception ability.