> I have to disagree. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what they see, taste and hear. To understand yes, however I meant "identify"

> I have to disagree. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to understand what they see, taste and hear. To understand yes, however I meant "identify" in the sense of recognizing an object. I show a picture of an apple to a child a bit over a year old, hide it, put it in a basket of other things and present it back to them, they will be able to identify it. Or if you show an object to a child, then hide the object, they can realize that the object is no longer there, regardless of their understanding of what happened to the object. > Many things we take for granted as being innate to the human experience, are in fact learned (trained) behavior. I don't think it's that simple, I would say it's both. I don't question learning plays a big role in recognition, just pointing out that a large amount intrinsic knowledge also exists from early child development. Many of those cases where someone regains eyesight happens much later in life, at a time when their brains have largely matured to the point that neuroplasticity is pretty much over for them. Having someone's brain develop with almost no visual input at a young age is bound to mean that their visual cortex and its connections to everything else doesn't develop as it should. From a quick search, it appears that to some degree children born categorically blind can recover all the way up to teenage life. [1] But indeed it's likely less effective than a younger child undergoing a similar procedure (which I don't think is really that rare: it's hard to diagnose vision problems at young age, and a lot of children who get necessary corrective surgery at young age turn out fine). [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14592 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14592