The ability to coordinate vision with fine motor skills.

Hand-eye coordination begins developing in infancy. Although it is an instinctive developmental achievement that cannot be taught, parents can hasten its progress by providing their children with stimulating toys and other objects that will encourage them to practice reaching out for things and grasping them.

Until the age of eight weeks, infants are too nearsighted to see objects at distances farther than about eight inches from their faces, and they have not yet discovered their hands, which are kept fisted throughout this period. By the age of two to two-and-a-half months, the eyes focus much better, and babies can follow a moving object with their gaze, even turning their heads to keep sight of it longer. However, when a child this age drops an object, she will try to find it by feeling rather than looking for...