Final answer:
While taste is well-developed in newborns, it is vision that is typically the least mature at birth. Newborns show preferences in taste and can recognize their mother's scent, indicating more developed taste and olfactory senses as compared to vision.
Step-by-step explanation:
Taste and Smell in Newborns
The question at hand is which component of the sensory system is the least mature at birth. Among the sensory abilities, taste is often well-developed at birth. Newborns can distinguish different tastes including sweet, sour, bitter, and salty and often show a preference for sweet tastes. However, it is vision that is typically the least mature at birth. Newborn infants have significant sensory abilities, but their senses are not yet fully developed, with vision being the most underdeveloped. Infants show a preference for faces and are able to distinguish the smell of their own mother, indicating a relatively more mature olfactory sense compared to vision.
Gustation (taste) and olfaction (smell) are chemical senses that require receptors to transmit information to the brain. Over time, the ability to taste and smell declines, with a marked decrease around age 50. Interestingly, our ability to taste and smell can often be interrelated, as evidenced by the change in taste perception when one has a stuffy nose. Despite this interrelation, a newborn's olfactory capability, which enables the infant to recognize their mother's scent, suggests that smell is comparatively more developed than vision at birth.