In the documentary ‘Babies’ by Thomas Balmès, four newborns who live in different cultures and the environment from various regions of the world—Ponijao (Namibia), Bayarjargal (Mongolia), Mari (Japan), and Hattie (USA). The documentary visually shows each child’s developments with respect to perceptual, motor and cognitive perspectives which may be diversely influenced by diversified cultures and environments during their infancy. Ponijao and Bayar interacted with natural resources with the natural environment, whereas Mari and Hattie have accessibility to innovative technological resources. Differences of child’s experience not just depends on the distinctive customs to bonding with their surrounding environment but also their caregiver parenting styles.
The film demonstrated the cognitive development of babies in the first Piaget’s cognitive development called the sensorimotor stage (birth to two-years-old age). At this stage, infants form reflex action to symbolic processing by exploring and adapting to the environment. Piaget suggested that children show greater interest in the world around them and pay more attention to the new object to contribute their metacognitive knowledge. Bayarjargal (Bayar) and Ponijao live in the rural area which gives them the opportunities to interact with natural resources such as rocks, soils, woods, and animals. In contrast, Hattie and Mari have a lot of toys and objects that their parents provided. Furthermore, the basic principle of Piaget’s theory explained that children create their own theories to understand the world and to make the world seems more predictable. For example, the scene that Mari was placing a wood stick upright by fit it into the hole of the ring-like structure toy indicated that she was exploring and accommodating. Language and communication developments also evolve as infants get older. Each baby in the documentary had different experienced in bonding with their caregivers who help them contribute their communication skills. Mari and Hattie had their parents around to communicate and speak with them for the majority of the time. Likewise, Ponijao was likely to cooing and babbling first in comparison to all other babies in the documentary due to the fact that she is always surrounded by her parent or sibling and they often interact with her. Nevertheless, the only boy in the video was frequently being alone by himself as his mother went to work at the farm. Hence, Bayar tends to be the slowest in all four babies to start cooing and babbling.
Infants begin to reflexively responding to movements early in life—as infants’ motor skill improve, they experience their environment differently. Babies use common motions as clues to identify materials. Newborns’ growing ability to hold and manipulate objects allow them to learn more about the properties of objects which transforming how they perceive the world. Motor developments are illustrated throughout the documentary. Fine-motor skills appeared in all the babies. Hattie and Mari have shown grasping by using fingers including their thumbs to manipulating the object: Hattie was peeling a banana and Mari was trying to place a sticker on paper. In the same way, Ponijao and Bayar also holding and manipulating objects, as Ponijao was rubbing one rock to another and Bayar was holding the plastic bottle. Infants do not master balance just once, but they learn to balance for each posture because the body rotates around distinctive points with particular muscles. Since Ponijao always held in her mother’s arm or lap, she seemed to be the first of all four babies who master balancing as she walks with a can on her head. Bayar had experience swaddling; a strategy of soothing a crying baby by wrapping the baby tightly with cloth or blankets which restricted their movement, on the other hand, appeared to have a difficult time to keep his balanced and develop his motor skill slower than other infants. Moreover, Mari may either have an easy time or struggle in mastering her balance since she had exercise by playing in the baby jumper while her parent was cooking. The jumper could encourage the child to master correct posture but it’s could be a risk factor which might result in poor posture because some muscles were stretching when others were not. Thus, different culture may be delayed or promote motor development; however, they all eventually learned how to crawled and walk.
Newborns are aware of perceptual experiences via learning and memory as their important part of perception to begin interacting with the world. Early sense developments are useful as clues for newborns and young babies to respond to the stimuli. At the very beginning of the film, we can see the development of perceptual of touch as Ponijao started to pain cry as when she was hit by her older brother who was sitting beside her while they were playing with the rocks. Likewise, Bayar shown the same development as his older sibling was hitting him with a piece of cloth. According to the video, even Mari and Hattie also did pain cry as they fell because newborns are already capable of sensing perception of pain at this pace. Babies paid attention to the sounds that they perceived by the surrounding environment. Ponijao and Bayar pay attention to sounds such as the sound of toys, animals, and instruments as well as Hattie’s overt attention to the sound of a vacuum machine as her eyes followed the vacuum when it’s moved. Meanwhile, Mari had attended a music class with her mother that link body movement to the rhythm. In addition, we can see habituation when Hattie loss interested and walk away trying to open the door as her father sing the song along with the music class.
In conclusion, the documentary implied that the four babies live in discrete part of the world with their own unique cultures and parenting styles. Bayar and Ponijao live in countryside which surrounded with nature. Hattie and Mari, on the other hand, live in the urban region and have more access to technology. Regardless of various origins, they all develop in the same step. Therefore, these four newborns finally learned to coo, crawl, walk and tried to speak in the same manner despite the fact that some children develop faster and others due to both biological and environmental factors.