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Six levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life
Abstract
When do children become aware of themselves as differentiated and unique entity in the world? When and how do they become self-aware? Based on some recent empirical evidence, 5 levels of self-awareness are presented and discussed as they chronologically unfold from the moment of birth to approximately 4-5 years of age. A natural history of children's developing self-awareness is proposed as well as a model of adult self-awareness that is informed by the dynamic of early development. Adult self-awareness is viewed as the dynamic flux between basic levels of consciousness that develop chronologically early in life.
... As per (Rochat, 2003), "When do children become aware of themselves as differentiated and unique entity in the world? When and how do they become self-aware? ...
... Mirror self-recognition has been the most popular paradigm used to assess this ability in children. Nevertheless, according to (Rochat, 2003), there are, at least, three different levels of explicit self-awareness. We therefore designed three different selfrecognition tasks, each corresponding to one of these levels (a mirror selfrecognition task, a picture self-recognition task and a masked self-recognition task). ...
... The ''me" is an explicit and conscious idea of the self; it allows the self to become the subject of one's own attention. (Rochat, 2003) […] five gradual levels […] The ''I" is composed of the two first implicit levels and the ''me" comprises the final three explicit levels. ...
From various disciplines/investigations, so far, there are 54 facets/sub-aspects/notions of the self: [1] the conceptual self, [2] the contextualized self, [3] the core self, [4] the dialogic self, [5] the ecological self, [6] the embodied self, [7] the emergent self, [8] the empirical self, [9] the existential self, [10] the extended self, [11] the fictional self (no-self), [12] the full-grown self, [13] the interpersonal self, [14] the material self, [15] the narrative self, [16] the philosophical self, [17] the physical self, [18] the private self [19] public self, [20] the representational self, [21] the rock bottom essential self, [22] the semiotic self, [23] the social self, [24] the transparent self, and [25] the verbal self, [26] proto self [27] autobiographical self or continuous self, [28] the self-conscious self with the sense of body ownership, agency authorship of thoughts and perception, [29] working self, [30] the phenomenal self, [31] bodily self, [32] the minimal self, [33] perceived self, and [34] free-energy self, [35] the neural self, [36] the synaptic self, [37] the midline self, [38] the interpersonal self, [2] the conceptual self, [39] Experiential aspects of self, [40] affective aspects of self, [41] situated aspects of self, [42] spiritual self, [43] The ‘facet of the “self” related to genetic and recorded/published information during life’s salient work/karma/action,’ [44] immediate/momentary self, [45] cognitive self, [46] the self as A-series tensed-time (past, present, future) or the self as an existence made/composed OF time, [47]. The ‘causal self’, [48] volitional self, [49] perspectival self, [50] Transcendental self, [51] metaphysical self, [52] self as pure Consciousness or “Pure Self-Observing System”, Jivatman/Atman (= Brahman) of Vedanta, Shaivism, and so on, [53] the self-aware, independent, eternal/immortal, passive invariant self (PIS) (individualized Purusha, Drishta/witness) is from the non-interactive dualism-based Sankhya, and [54] IDAM’s individual dual-aspect-self for each of the above facets of self.
We can categorize all notions of the self into two groups:
(I) James’ “Me” (self-as-object in the sense of Phenomenology (experience of self, phenomenal self): Wittgenstein’s “I” (‘I see me in the mirror’) and/or Wittgenstein’s “Me” (‘I see me in the mirror’); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of self as in [1]-[43]. In other words, “Me” (self-as-object) is the SE of self, i.e., self-experience/consciousness/awareness, which can include Damasio’s core self (np aspect) and the self (np aspect) that has neural-physical basis (NBP) = Northoff et al’s CSMS-NN and its activities = the p-aspect of a self-related state of a mindbrain system in the IDAM framework.
(II) James’ “I” (self-as-subject (SAS), metaphysical self: “The self as a metaphysical fact that consciousness is subjective: ‘the Thinker that does the thinking’) in the sense of metaphysics (existence of self); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of the self: [44]-[54]. In other words, “I” (self-as-subject) is experiencer/cognizer/thinker/actor; it is NOT the SE of self.
We can further group SAS into two types/facets: (IIa) SAS in [44]-[49] that have a respective neural-physical basis (NPB) and (IIb) SAS in [50]-[53] that have respective subtle brain-body basis (SBB).
In other words, if yogis are correct that SAS survives physical death then there are two facets of SAS: (IIa) SAS-in-GPB (such as cognitive self) with its own inseparable NPB and (IIb) SAS-in-SBB (such as metaphysical self) with its own inseparable SBB.
[54] In the IDAM, we accept both facets of SAS without any internal inconsistency. In the IDAM (inseparable dual-aspect monism), the “self” is the experiencer/cognizer/actor (performer of actions) as a non-physical (np) aspect of a SAS-related state of a subject’s mindbrain system with respective either NPB or SBB as the inseparable physical (p) aspect.
Just imagine you are in front of a mirror. (IIa) If SAS with its inseparable SBB resides in GPB then an OOBEr will experience two bodies: (a) whole SBB and (b) GPB below the neck, here SBB is superposed with GPB. If SAS-in-SBB is superposed with SAS-in-GPB, and SBB is superposed with NPBs of all other facets of self.
(IIb) If SAS with its inseparable SBB resides in SBB then the OOBEr will experience two bodies: (a) SBB (below the neck) and (b) whole GPB; here SBB is not superposed with GPB, SAS-in-SBB is not superposed with SAS-in-GPB and SBB is not superposed with NPBs of all other facets of self. For example, yogi Satya Prakash Dubey (SPD)’s self resided in SBB during his OBE because he mentioned that he “saw”/experienced his whole GPB along with its surroundings.
In the IDAM, it is not that by combining various proto-experiences (precursor of SE) leads to a specific SE (subjective experience) such as redness, as proposed in panpsychism. Instead, it is discarding the unrelated states in the superposition of all beable ontic states to reach to the specific state for the specific SEs. This is accomplished when a specific neural network is formed and then information is processed if all other necessary conditions are satisfied. Eventually, a specific beable ontic conscious state is selected by the “self” through the interaction between the self-related signals with the resultant of the matching/non-matching the stimulus-dependent feed-forward (FF) neural-physical signals with cognitive memory dependent feedback (FB) signals.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
How do you measure a construct as complex as subjective wellbeing? The first part of this chapter reviews the many tools available for measuring each dimension of the construct, as well as the well-being profile—a new measure that holds some promise for capturing subjective wellbeing holistically in only fifteen questions. The second part of the chapter then explains why even fifteen questions is likely too long for many applications in policy and social science. Life satisfaction scales hold a great deal of promise as a unidimensional and sufficiently cardinal measure of subjective wellbeing for these applications. However, there are several concerns about these scales, notably inconsistent scale use across respondents or within respondents over time, that need to be investigated more thoroughly. The chapter provides a conceptual analysis of these concerns and uses them to differentiate adaptation, scale-norming, and reference point shifts.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
The study of subjective wellbeing is dominated by two traditions: the psychological and philosophical. If the psychological is deficient, it makes sense to look for solutions in the philosophical. As such, this chapter begins with a thorough but not exhaustive review of the principal philosophical theories of wellbeing: mental state, objective list, preference satisfaction, eudaimonic, and subjectivist. As philosophers are predominantly concerned with the evaluative character of wellbeing, a key benefit of this exercise is that it sensitizes us to the complex value judgments that must be made when defining wellbeing. However, the philosophical tradition has its own problems. In particular, its tendency to delineate and classify has led it to overlook complementarities and overlaps between supposedly competing theories. And its disinterest in “applied” questions has left the practical issue of how you get wellbeing largely investigated, despite the insights it provides regarding what wellbeing is.
... As per (Rochat, 2003), "When do children become aware of themselves as differentiated and unique entity in the world? When and how do they become self-aware? ...
... Mirror self-recognition has been the most popular paradigm used to assess this ability in children. Nevertheless, according to (Rochat, 2003), there are, at least, three different levels of explicit self-awareness. We therefore designed three different selfrecognition tasks, each corresponding to one of these levels (a mirror selfrecognition task, a picture self-recognition task and a masked self-recognition task). ...
... The ''me" is an explicit and conscious idea of the self; it allows the self to become the subject of one's own attention. (Rochat, 2003) […] five gradual levels […] The ''I" is composed of the two first implicit levels and the ''me" comprises the final three explicit levels. ...
From various disciplines/investigations, so far, there are 54 facets/sub-aspects/notions of the self: [1] the conceptual self, [2] the contextualized self, [3] the core self, [4] the dialogic self, [5] the ecological self, [6] the embodied self, [7] the emergent self, [8] the empirical self, [9] the existential self, [10] the extended self, [11] the fictional self (no-self), [12] the full-grown self, [13] the interpersonal self, [14] the material self, [15] the narrative self, [16] the philosophical self, [17] the physical self, [18] the private self [19] public self, [20] the representational self, [21] the rock bottom essential self, [22] the semiotic self, [23] the social self, [24] the transparent self, and [25] the verbal self, [26] proto self [27] autobiographical self or continuous self, [28] the self-conscious self with the sense of body ownership, agency authorship of thoughts and perception, [29] working self, [30] the phenomenal self, [31] bodily self, [32] the minimal self, [33] perceived self, and [34] free-energy self, [35] the neural self, [36] the synaptic self, [37] the midline self, [38] the interpersonal self, [2] the conceptual self, [39] Experiential aspects of self, [40] affective aspects of self, [41] situated aspects of self, [42] spiritual self, [43] The ‘facet of the “self” related to genetic and recorded/published information during life’s salient work/karma/action,’ [44] immediate/momentary self, [45] cognitive self, [46] the self as A-series tensed-time (past, present, future) or the self as an existence made/composed OF time, [47]. The ‘causal self’, [48] volitional self, [49] perspectival self, [50] Transcendental self, [51] metaphysical self, [52] self as pure Consciousness or “Pure Self-Observing System”, Jivatman/Atman (= Brahman) of Vedanta, Shaivism, and so on, [53] the self-aware, independent, eternal/immortal, passive invariant self (PIS) (individualized Purusha, Drishta/witness) is from the non-interactive dualism-based Sankhya, and [54] IDAM’s individual dual-aspect-self for each of the above facets of self.
We can categorize all notions of the self into two groups:
(I) James’ “Me” (self-as-object in the sense of Phenomenology (experience of self, phenomenal self): Wittgenstein’s “I” (‘I see me in the mirror’) and/or Wittgenstein’s “Me” (‘I see me in the mirror’); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of self as in [1]-[43]. In other words, “Me” (self-as-object) is the SE of self, i.e., self-experience/consciousness/awareness, which can include Damasio’s core self (np aspect) and the self (np aspect) that has neural-physical basis (NBP) = Northoff et al’s CSMS-NN and its activities = the p-aspect of a self-related state of a mindbrain system in the IDAM framework.
(II) James’ “I” (self-as-subject (SAS), metaphysical self: “The self as a metaphysical fact that consciousness is subjective: ‘the Thinker that does the thinking’) in the sense of metaphysics (existence of self); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of the self: [44]-[54]. In other words, “I” (self-as-subject) is experiencer/cognizer/thinker/actor; it is NOT the SE of self.
We can further group SAS into two types/facets: (IIa) SAS in [44]-[49] that have a respective neural-physical basis (NPB) and (IIb) SAS in [50]-[53] that have respective subtle brain-body basis (SBB).
In other words, if yogis are correct that SAS survives physical death then there are two facets of SAS: (IIa) SAS-in-GPB (such as cognitive self) with its own inseparable NPB and (IIb) SAS-in-SBB (such as metaphysical self) with its own inseparable SBB.
[54] In the IDAM, we accept both facets of SAS without any internal inconsistency. In the IDAM (inseparable dual-aspect monism), the “self” is the experiencer/cognizer/actor (performer of actions) as a non-physical (np) aspect of a SAS-related state of a subject’s mindbrain system with respective either NPB or SBB as the inseparable physical (p) aspect.
Just imagine you are in front of a mirror. (IIa) If SAS with its inseparable SBB resides in GPB then an OOBEr will experience two bodies: (a) whole SBB and (b) GPB below the neck, here SBB is superposed with GPB. If SAS-in-SBB is superposed with SAS-in-GPB, and SBB is superposed with NPBs of all other facets of self.
(IIb) If SAS with its inseparable SBB resides in SBB then the OOBEr will experience two bodies: (a) SBB (below the neck) and (b) whole GPB; here SBB is not superposed with GPB, SAS-in-SBB is not superposed with SAS-in-GPB and SBB is not superposed with NPBs of all other facets of self. For example, yogi Satya Prakash Dubey (SPD)’s self resided in SBB during his OBE because he mentioned that he “saw”/experienced his whole GPB along with its surroundings.
In the IDAM, it is not that by combining various proto-experiences (precursor of SE) leads to a specific SE (subjective experience) such as redness, as proposed in panpsychism. Instead, it is discarding the unrelated states in the superposition of all beable ontic states to reach to the specific state for the specific SEs. This is accomplished when a specific neural network is formed and then information is processed if all other necessary conditions are satisfied. Eventually, a specific beable ontic conscious state is selected by the “self” through the interaction between the self-related signals with the resultant of the matching/non-matching the stimulus-dependent feed-forward (FF) neural-physical signals with cognitive memory dependent feedback (FB) signals.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
While subjective well-being scholarship has its merits, it is not without its weaknesses, and these are the subject of this chapter. While the definition and approach of the field were appropriate in its historical context, they are inappropriate and indeed problematic for applications in public policy. In particular, this chapter demonstrates that the field is naive about the normative implications of “wellbeing” theories and that its measurement instruments lack precision. Both of these faults find their origins in the field’s atheoretic inclinations and operationalist epistemology. It is time to replace this with a more realist epistemology. That requires a thorough theory of subjective wellbeing that engages extensively with normativity, which this book provides.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
The purpose of this chapter is twofold. First, to review philosophical arguments against wellbeing theories of the sort I have outlined. This should hopefully sensitize subjective wellbeing scholars to the ethical nuances of applying subjective wellbeing outside the context of academic research. Ethical critiques of subjective wellbeing are especially potent when it is government rather than friends or therapists trying to promote it. This is the second purpose of the chapter: to argue that government should be very cautious about promoting subjective wellbeing directly. They should instead focus on welfare—the options available to citizens. The final part of the chapter discusses ways to begin applying subjective wellbeing in public policy without crossing ethical risky red lines.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
Eudaimonic accounts of wellbeing have a rich and storied history in philosophy and psychology. This chapter opens with an explanation of the similarities and differences between these theories. The rest of the chapter focuses on psychological perspectives, especially that of self-determination theory. This body of psychological literature provides an enormous amount of insight into the nature of subjective wellbeing, especially how to get it. The chapter reviews the most important of these approaches, namely the ones focusing on basic psychological needs, the motivation spectrum, the notion of self-concordant goals, and the evolutionary underpinnings of our psychological makeup.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
The study of “subjective wellbeing” has seen explosive growth in recent decades, opening important new discourses in personality and social psychology, happiness economics, and moral philosophy. Now it is moving into the policy domain. In this it has arguably overstepped its limits. The shallow theoretical base of subjective wellbeing research, the limitations of its measurement instruments, and its ethical naivety make policymaking on the basis of its findings a risky venture. The present volume is an attempt to shore up these weaknesses and set subjective wellbeing scholarship on a course for several more decades of growth and maturation. It presents a theory of subjective wellbeing in two parts. The first is the subjective wellbeing production function—a model of wellbeing as outcome. The second is the coalescence of being—a model of the self-actualization process by which wellbeing is achieved. This two-part model integrates ideas from subjective wellbeing studies with complementary ideas in analytical and continental philosophy, clinical, moral, and developmental psychology, and welfare economics. Importantly, this theory is ethically sensitive, bridging the gap between the philosophical and psychological perspectives on wellbeing in a way that illuminates the complexities facing the application of subjective wellbeing in public policy. The book also provides a thorough review of various ways in which subjective wellbeing can be studied empirically, and the hard trade-offs we face between long surveys that capture the richness of the concept and the parsimony required by social surveys and policy analysis.
... Toddlers have self-recognition (Rochat 2003). For example, when placed in front of a mirror with a spot of rouge on their nose, they rub the rouge, indicating that the colouring violates their understanding of what they look like. ...
... Young children also understand that they are a person recognised by others. This is the basis for the future development of perspective taking, a capacity toddlers lack (Rochat 2003;Thompson 2006). ...
... Children develop metacognitive awareness around 5 or 7 (Rochat 2003). This is the ability to think reflexively about one's own thoughts. ...
The study of subjective wellbeing has grown substantially in recent decades and is now seeking to influence public policy. The complexities of this new application have revealed weaknesses in the foundations of the field. Its operationalist epistemology was appropriate given its historical context, but undermines its ability to explain the mechanisms by which policy can improve subjective wellbeing. Likewise, the field’s deliberate avoidance of the evaluative element of “wellbeing”—what is “good for” somebody—leaves it poorly equipped to engage with the ethical and political complexities of policymaking. The present volume provides the theoretical depth that the field of subjective wellbeing is lacking by integrating psychological, philosophical, economic, and political perspectives on wellbeing. The end result is a rich and ethically sensitive theory of subjective wellbeing that can underpin scholarly research, inform therapy and self-help, and guide wellbeing public policy
... rejection (Cacioppo et al., 2013;Vijayakumar, Cheng, & Pfeifer, 2017). Next, we assess whether developmental changes in mentalizing, such as those during early childhood and adolescence, are associated with changes in sensitivity to rejection (e.g., Rochat, 2003;Somerville, 2013). Then, we examine whether individuals who demonstrate compromised mentalizing, such as those with schizophrenia or autism, exhibit reduced sensitivity to rejection (e.g., Bauminger & Kasari, 2000;Gradin, Waiter, Kumar, Stickle, & Milders, 2012). ...
... The way that we think about ourselves in relation to other people undergoes significant changes from early childhood through adolescence and adulthood, resulting in changes in emotional responsivity to social events across development. Two notable developmental changes in emotional responsivity linked to a growing concern for one's social relationships are (a) the emergence of self-conscious emotions and sensitivity to social rejection in early childhood (i.e., around 3-8 years old) (Rochat, 2003), and (b) heightened negative emotional responsivity to social rejection during adolescence (i.e., the time between puberty and adulthood) (Somerville, 2013). Interestingly, both of these developmental milestones are marked by significant changes in the mentalizing network. ...
... However, children before the age of 4 typically fail to recognize the person's false belief that the object is in the original location, instead reporting that the person must know that the object has been moved. When children develop the ability to perform this complex mentalizing task, it demonstrates their ability to infer that other people have their own thoughts and feelings that are separate from one's own thoughts and feelings (Rochat, 2003). ...
The pain of rejection is often tied to the way that we interpret how another person thinks or feels about us. In this review, we explore evidence from the current literature to examine the role of mentalizing, the process by which we think about and understand someone else’s thoughts and feelings, in the experience of social rejection. We first turn to meta-analyses investigating the neural bases of social rejection to examine whether parts of the mentalizing network are also active during the experience of rejection (Cacioppo et al., Sci Rep 3:2027, 2013; Vijayakumar et al., NeuroImage 153:359–368, 2017). Next, we review some evidence suggesting that developmental changes in mentalizing, such as those during early childhood and adolescence, may be associated with changes in sensitivity to rejection (e.g., Somerville. Curr Directions Psychol Sci 22:121, 2013; Rochat, 2003). Then, we examine the extent to which individuals who demonstrate compromised mentalizing, such as those with schizophrenia or autism, may exhibit reduced sensitivity to rejection (e.g., Bauminger and Kasari, Child Dev 71:447–456, 2000; Gradin et al., PLoS One 7:42608, 2012). Finally, we summarize some future directions building on the possibility of a link between mentalizing and the experience of social rejection. The available evidence seems to support a role of the mentalizing network in feeling the pain of social rejection, such that understanding another person’s mental state may be what allows us to understand and process rejection.
... Developmental theorists propose that self-awareness, or accurate perceptions of one's own competencies and characteristics begins to emerge in infancy and becomes more coherent, complex, and organized in late adolescence and early adulthood (Damon & Hart, 1988;Harter, 2012). Supported by neuro-developmental and socio-cultural factors, self-awareness proceeds from awareness of concrete, physical abilities, and behaviours to more abstract, psychological, and social attributes (Damon & Hart, 1988;Rochat, 2003). Young children (i.e., < 8 years) often overestimate their own competencies and hold unrealistically positive self-perceptions (Damon & Hart, 1988;Harter, 2012). ...
... A further unexpected finding is that children's self-awareness of their physical functioning was not greater than selfawareness of cognitive and interpersonal (i.e., socio-emotional and communication) domains. Such findings are contrary to those in the adult brain injury literature (Hart et al., 2009;Hoofien et al., 2004) and theories of the typical development of self-awareness in children, whereby accurate self-appraisal of more concrete and observable functions (e.g., motor and sensory skills, performance on self-care tasks) emerges before accurate self-perceptions of more abstract and higher-order functions (Damon & Hart, 1988;Rochat, 2003). Notably, the items on the physical subscale of the PAQ refer mainly to fatigue (e.g., not becoming tired on activities) and participation in sports (e.g., playing sport as well as their friends) rather than sensory and motor skills per se. ...
Self-awareness has been found to vary across different functional domains for adults with acquired brain injury (ABI); however, domain-specific self-awareness is yet to be investigated following paediatric ABI. This study aimed to validate the Paediatric Awareness Questionnaire (PAQ) as a multi-domain measure of self-awareness and to investigate domain-specific self-awareness in children with ABI. One hundred and ninety-seven children and adolescents (8–16 years, M = 12.44, SD = 2.62) with mixed causes of ABI (70% with traumatic brain injury) and their parents (n = 197) were recruited through consecutive rehabilitation appointments and completed the PAQ. The 37 items of the parent version of the PAQ were subjected to a principal component analysis with varimax rotation. A five-component solution (29 items) explained 64% of the variance in the PAQ items. Components revealed five domains of self-awareness: socio-emotional functioning, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognition, physical functioning, and communication. Internal consistency of the components ranged from acceptable to excellent (α = .70–.95). The analysis identified that children had poorer self-awareness of cognitive functioning than socio-emotional functioning, ADLs, and communication skills. Overall, the findings identify five components (i.e., functional domains) of self-awareness and provide some support that self-awareness varies across domains following paediatric ABI.
... Multisensory integration has received much attention in developmental research (Bahrick & Lickliter, 2000;Bahrick & Watson, 1985;Zmyj, Jank, Schütz-Bosbach, & Daum, 2011) and is seen as a fundamental aspect for the development of a bodily self (Bahrick, 2013;Riva, 2018;Rochat, 2003). Therefore, investigating how multisensory integration directly underlies subjective feelings of agency and body ownership might deepen our understanding of how the sense of bodily self develops. ...
... Synchrony detection between motor intents and sensory outcomes and synchrony detection between different multisensory inputs have been discussed as crucial factors underlying the sense of self in infant literature, showing that a basic sense of the body might be present from very early on during development (Rochat, 2003). However, this process likely undergoes fine-tuning throughout childhood, facilitating the maintenance of a stable sense of bodily self even though the physical body itself is rapidly changing. ...
The sense of a bodily self is thought to depend on adaptive weighting and integration of bodily afferents and prior beliefs. Evidence from studies using paradigms such as the rubber hand illusion and full body illusion suggests changes in the integration of visuotactile bodily signals throughout childhood. Here, we extended this line of research by assessing how bottom-up visuo-motor synchrony and expectancy, modulated by visual appearance of virtual avatars, contribute to embodiment in children. We compared responses to a first-person perspective virtual full body illusion from 8-to 12-year-old children and adults while manipulating synchrony of the avatar's movements (synchronous, 0.5-s delay, or 1-s delay compared with the participant's movements) and appearance of the avatar (human or skeleton). We measured embodiment with both subjective questionnaires and objective skin conductance responses to virtual threat. Results showed that children experienced ownership for the virtual avatar in a similar way as adults, which was reduced with increasing asynchrony, and for the skeleton avatar as compared with the human avatar. This modulation of ownership was not reflected in the skin con-ductance responses, which were equally high in all experimental conditions and only showed a modulation of repetition by age. In contrast, in children the subjective experience of agency was less affected by the dampening effects of visuomotor asynchrony or reduced human likeness and was overall higher. These findings suggest that children can easily embody a virtual avatar but that different aspects of embodiment develop at different rates, which
... Children's developing sense of self should be primarily integrated with their social development from an evolutionary perspective and based on the content of the thoughts generated by the default mode network (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014) and the centrality of social relationships to peoples' self-concept (Shavelson et al., 1976). And this is the case (Rochat, 2003(Rochat, , 2021. By 3 years, children become more sensitive to the potential evaluations of others and may change their social presentations to elicit more positive evaluations (K. ...
... The approach and associated empirical studies provide insights into the evolved function of self-representations and through this unique insight into core aspects of self-concepts. Evolutionary models (Flinn et al., 2005;Geary, 2005), developmental research (Rochat, 2003), and studies of the brain's default mode network (Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014;Raichle, 2015) converge on the importance of social cooperation and competition in the evolution of the self-system. The implication is that social relationships and traits that influence these relationships, including physical traits (e.g., attractiveness), will be universal foci of children's and adolescents' self-concepts, and this is the case (Esnaola et al., 2020;Rentzsch et al., 2016;Shavelson et al., 1976). ...
Schooling is ubiquitous in the modern world and academic development is now a critical aspect of preparation for adulthood. A step back in time to pre-modern societies and an examination of life in remaining traditional societies today reveals that universal formal schooling is an historically recent phenomenon. This evolutionary and historical recency has profound implications for understanding academic development, including how instructional practices modify evolved or biological primary abilities (e.g., spoken language) to create evolutionarily novel or biologically secondary academic competencies (e.g., reading). We propose the development of secondary abilities promotes the emergence of academic self-concepts that in turn are supported by evolved systems for self-awareness and self-knowledge. Unlike some forms of self-knowledge (e.g., relative physical abilities) that appear to be universal and central to many people’s overall self-concept, the relative importance of academic self-concepts are expected to be dependent on explicit social and cultural supports for their valuation. These culturally contingent self-concepts are contrasted with universal social and physical self-concepts, with implications for understanding variation students’ relative valuation of academic competencies and their motivations to engage in academic learning.
... Hence, simpler organisms are expected to display less intricate processes, while more complex organisms are expected to show more developed cognitive processes. Accordingly, and in agreement with the views of some authors (Birch et al., 2020;de Waal, 2019;Legrain et al., 2011;Morin, 2006;Rochat, 2003), our first premise is that self-awareness has gradations (or levels). Secondly, we posit that these levels vary with respect to: (1) the presence of specific components (or lack thereof); and (2) the extent and rate of its development within species. ...
... The idea that self-awareness has different levels is not new (Birch et al., 2020;de Waal, 2019;Legrain et al., 2011;Morin, 2006;Rochat, 2003), but there have been different approaches to describe this concept, such as integrative levels (Greenberg and Tobach, 1984), phyletic levels (Hodos and Campbell, 1969), and complexity levels (Morin, 2006). In the current article, "levels of self-awareness" refers to complexity levels, within a cognitive framework (Morin, 2006). ...
The capacity to be self-aware is regarded as a fundamental difference between humans and other species. However, growing evidence challenges this notion, indicating that many animals show complex signs and behaviors that are consonant with self-awareness. In this review, we suggest that many animals are indeed selfaware, but that the complexity of this process differs among species. We discuss this topic by addressing several different questions regarding self-awareness: what is selfawareness, how has self-awareness been studied experimentally, which species may be self-aware, what are its potential adaptive advantages. We conclude by proposing alternative models for the emergence of self-awareness in relation to species evolutionary paths, indicating future research questions to advance this field further.
... Methods from regression analysis, nonparametric statistics, and machine learning involve changing the parameters and even the basic structure of a model as new data become available, and sometimes researchers even invent a new class of models when old ones no longer perform well. That behavior corresponds more closely to human learning, which can involve coming to a whole new understanding of how the world works after going through a novel experience (28). It does not correspond to a Significance Differences in beliefs within a society are a prevalent human phenomenon. ...
... Note that 25 since f1 and f incur the same error outside of A. On the other hand, exactly one of f and f1 makes a mistake on any 26 (x, y) ∼ D1|A. Therefore, err 28 By the definition of D1 : 30 where the last transition is due to the fact that f1 is the perfect classifier for D1. Using the fact that Pr ...
We present two models of how people form beliefs that are based on machine learning theory. We illustrate how these models give insight into observed human phenomena by showing how polarized beliefs can arise even when people are exposed to almost identical sources of information. In our first model, people form beliefs that are deterministic functions that best fit their past data (training sets). In that model, their inability to form probabilistic beliefs can lead people to have opposing views even if their data are drawn from distributions that only slightly disagree. In the second model, people pay a cost that is increasing in the complexity of the function that represents their beliefs. In this second model, even with large training sets drawn from exactly the same distribution, agents can disagree substantially because they simplify the world along different dimensions. We discuss what these models of belief formation suggest for improving people’s accuracy and agreement.
... Around eighteen months of age, typically developing toddlers start to recognise their mirror reflection. This can be verified in a procedure (traditionally called the rouge test) in which the experimenter discretely puts a smudge on the child's face, or a sticker on the child's head, without the child realising it, and then holds up a mirror for the child to see [28]. Children old enough to recognise themselves in the mirror reflection often touch their face or head when seeing the unexpected smudge or sticker. ...
This paper introduces an original concept (projective anthropomorphism) towards exploring a psychological dimension that is irreducible to the forms of anthropomorphism investigated in both cognitive science and social robotics. Projective anthro-pomorphism is an unconscious bias towards anticipating humanlike characteristics in robots. An overview of the variety of ways in which projection has been conceptualised in psychology and psychoanalysis is provided before discussing implications for theorising projective anthropomorphism. The proposed concept alludes to the projection of existential anxieties and desires onto myths, legends, linguistic tropes, and science-fiction motifs of humanoid automata. Such motifs and their associated narratives populate contemporary popular culture, and feed into social representations of robots. The importance of considering projective anthropomorphism lies in the extent to which its phenomena channel people's expectations and attitudes towards technological artefacts, as well as steering technological possibilities.
... Broadly speaking, self-awareness is an extension of the self, reflecting on how people understand and evaluate themselves. Scholars indicate that self-awareness enables people to experience themselves as unique and separate individuals (Duval & Silvia, 2001;Philippe, 2003). With the aid of self-awareness, people are then empowered to make changes and to build on their areas of strength, as well as identify areas where they could improve (Susan, 1999). ...
Purpose
Employee’s lying behavior has become ubiquitous at work, and managers are keen to know what can be done to curb such behavior. Managers often apply anti-lying strategies in their management and, in particular, the role of self-awareness on lying intervention has drawn academic attention recently. Drawing on multi-disciplinary literature, this study aims to investigate the efficacy of self-awareness in reducing lying behavior.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the perspectives of positivism and deductive reasoning, a quasi-experimental research approach was adopted. Employees from Dijon, France were recruited as research participants. Based on the literature, different conditions (scenario manipulation) were designed and implemented in the laboratory, in which participants were exposed to pre-set lying opportunities and their responses were analyzed accordingly.
Findings
Unlike prior studies which praised the merits of self-awareness, the authors found that self-awareness did not decrease lying behavior, not encouraging the confession of lying either. Employees actually lied more when they believed other employees were lying.
Practical implications
This study suggests managers not to rely on employee’s self-awareness; rather, the concept of self-awareness should be incorporated into the work ethics, and managers should schedule regular workshops to keep employees informed of the importance of ethics. When employees are regularly reminded of the ethics and appreciate its importance, their intention of lying is more likely to decrease.
Originality/value
To the best of the atuhors’ knowledge, the current research is the first in its kind to investigate lying intervention of employees in the laboratory setting. Research findings have brought new insights into the lying intervention literature, which has important implication on the implementation of anti-lying strategies.
... Spontaneous mirror self-recognition is limited to humans (starting with 15-24 month-old children) and a few other species, including chimpanzees, orangutans, elephants, dolphins, Indian house crows, and magpies (Gallup, 1970;Amsterdam, 1972;Suarez and Gallup, 1981;Anderson, 1984;Reiss and Marino, 2001;Rochat, 2003;Plotnik et al., 2006;Prior et al., 2008;Buniyaadi et al., 2019). According to a recent striking study, it even occurs in the cleaner wrasse fish (Labroides dimidiatus), which is capable of detecting a colored mark on its throat with the help of a mirror and subsequently displays throat-scraping behavior to remove the mark (Kohda et al., 2019). ...
Spontaneous mirror self-recognition is achieved by only a limited number of species, suggesting a sharp "cognitive Rubicon" that only few can pass. But is the demarcation line that sharp? In studies on monkeys, who do not recognize themselves in a mirror, animals can make a difference between their mirror image and an unknown conspecific. This evidence speaks for a gradualist view of mirror self-recognition. We hypothesize that such a gradual process possibly consists of at least two independent aptitudes, the ability to detect synchronicity between self-and foreign movement and the cognitive understanding that the mirror reflection is oneself. Pigeons are known to achieve the first but fail at the second aptitude. We therefore expected them to treat their mirror image differently from an unknown pigeon, without being able to understand that the mirror reflects their own image. We tested pigeons in a task where they either approached a mirror or a Plexiglas barrier to feed. Behind the Plexiglas an unknown pigeon walked at the same time toward the food bowl. Thus, we pitched a condition with a mirror-self and a foreign bird against each other, with both of them walking close toward the food bowl. By a detailed analysis of a whole suit of behavioral details, our results make it likely that the foreign pigeon was treated as a competitor while the mirror image caused hesitation as if being an uncanny conspecific. Our results are akin to those with monkeys and show that pigeons do not equal their mirror reflection with a conspecific, although being unable to recognize themselves in the mirror.
... Second, the developmental aspect is crucial in that a self is arguably an emergent property coming from developmental processes (Wolputte, 2004;Piaget, 1954;Erikson, 1950;Rochat, 2003). Therefore, one needs to have a developmental approach when modeling self-disorders in a robot. ...
The notion that self-disorders are at the root of the emergence of schizophrenia rather than a symptom of the disease, is getting more traction in the cognitive sciences. This is in line with philosophical approaches that consider an enactive self, constituted through action and interaction with the environment. We thereby analyze different definitions of the self and evaluate various computational theories lending to these ideas. Bayesian and predictive processing are promising approaches for computational modeling of the “active self”. We evaluate their implementation and challenges in computational psychiatry and cognitive developmental robotics. We describe how and why embodied robotic systems provide a valuable tool in psychiatry to assess, validate, and simulate mechanisms of self-disorders. Specifically, mechanisms involving sensorimotor learning, prediction, and self-other distinction, can be assessed with artificial agents. This link can provide essential insights to the formation of the self and new avenues in the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
... Childhood and adolescence represent remarkable periods of change. Early childhood involves extensive physical changes, major improvements in sensorimotor skills, and cognitive evolutions of self-awareness and language acquisition (Colson and Dworkin, 1997;McMurray, 2007;Rochat, 2003). Social bonding is another important childhood landmark, with play-time fostering several aspects of this development (Ginsburg et al., 2007). ...
Through dynamic transactional processes between genetic and environmental factors, childhood and adolescence involve reorganization and optimization of the cerebral cortex. The cortex and its development plays a crucial role for prototypical human cognitive abilities. At the same time, many common mental disorders appear during these critical phases of neurodevelopment. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can indirectly capture several multifaceted changes of cortical macro- and microstructure, of high relevance to further our understanding of the neural foundation of cognition and mental health. Great progress has been made recently in mapping the typical development of cortical morphology. Moreover, newer less explored MRI signal intensity and specialized quantitative T2 measures have been applied to assess microstructural cortical development. We review recent findings of typical postnatal macro- and microstructural development of the cerebral cortex from early childhood to young adulthood. We cover studies of cortical volume, thickness, area, gyrification, T1-weighted (T1w) tissue contrasts such a grey/white matter contrast, T1w/T2w ratio, magnetization transfer and myelin water fraction. Finally, we integrate imaging studies with cortical gene expression findings to further our understanding of the underlying neurobiology of the developmental changes, bridging the gap between ex vivo histological- and in vivo MRI studies.
... It describes how an individual consciously understands their character, feelings, and desires. The previous studies on self-awareness mainly explored the physical and mental status of people with human effort, such as field research study (2), user study (3), and questionnaires (4). However, these methods are time-consuming and limited to the laboratory environment, which is impossible for large-scale applications in daily life. ...
Self-awareness is an essential concept in physiology and psychology. Accurate overall self-awareness benefits the development and well being of an individual. The previous research studies on self-awareness mainly collect and analyze data in the laboratory environment through questionnaires, user study, or field research study. However, these methods are usually not real-time and unavailable for daily life applications. Therefore, we propose a new direction of utilizing lifelog for self-awareness. Lifelog records about daily activities are used for analysis, prediction, and intervention on individual physical and psychological status, which can be automatically processed in real-time. With the help of lifelog, ordinary people are able to understand their condition more precisely, get effective personal advice about health, and even discover physical and mental abnormalities at an early stage. As the first step on using lifelog for self-awareness, we learn from the traditional machine learning problems, and summarize a schema on data collection, feature extraction, label tagging, and model learning in the lifelog scenario. The schema provides a flexible and privacy-protected method for lifelog applications. Following the schema, four topics were conducted: sleep quality prediction, personality detection, mood detection and prediction, and depression detection. Experiments on real datasets show encouraging results on these topics, revealing the significant relation between daily activity records and physical and psychological self-awareness. In the end, we discuss the experiment results and limitations in detail and propose an application, Lifelog Recorder, for multi-dimensional self-awareness lifelog data collection.
... Self-recognition is considered to emerge in early childhood and contributes to social development (Gergely, 1999;Rochat, 2003). The importance of self-body recognition is supported by evidence of psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders which show its disturbance (Cascio et al., 2012;Ferri et al., 2012;Paton et al., 2012;Asada et al., 2018). ...
Visual self-body recognition is one of the fundamental cognitive functions, and a major contributor to social development. Previous studies have shown that body identity judgement becomes difficult when subjects viewed their hand from a third-person perspective, and that this perspective effect was not observed when viewing the hand of another person, indicating that there are brain regions which are more strongly influenced by the perspective of one's own body than the body of another person. In this study, we aimed to depict the brain network contributing to the integration of perspective and identity of human bodies. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment where 29 participants observed their own or someone else's hand from first- and third-person perspectives. In the univariate analysis, none of the brain regions showed an interaction between perspective and body identity. However, in the searchlight and region-of-interest multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA), decoding accuracies of self-hand from a first-person vs. those from a third-person perspective were higher than the decoding accuracies of other-hand from a first-person perspective vs. those from a third-person perspective in the early visual cortex. In addition, psychophysiological interaction analysis revealed a stronger effect of perspective of the self-hand than the other-hand condition in connectivity between the lateral occipito-temporal cortex and the early visual cortex, overlapped with the region depicted by MVPA. Our results suggest that the specific link between self-hand and first-person perspective is associated with identity-dependent perspective representations of the early visual cortex and functional connectivity between the early visual cortex and lateral occipito-temporal cortex, elucidating the nature of self-body recognition.
... Empirical observations suggest that, from the first days of life, newborns already show an implicit sense of bodily self-awareness based on the integration of different sensory information (Rochat and Hespos, 1997;Rochat and Striano, 2000). This early ability to differentiate sensations originating from within or outside the body represents the most basic self-experience (Rochat, 2003), providing a foundation for the development of self-other interactions. Moreover, from 2-month of age infants start to systematically explore their own body and the perceptual consequences of self-produced actions, developing a sense of the bodily self as differentiated, situated, and agent in the environment (Rochat and Striano, 2000). ...
During childhood, the body undergoes rapid changes suggesting the need to constantly update body representation based on the integration of multisensory signals. Sensory experiences in critical periods of early development may have a significant impact on the neurobiological mechanisms underpinning the development of the sense of one’s own body. Specifically, preterm children are at risk for sensory processing difficulties, which may lead to specific vulnerability in binding together sensory information in order to modulate the representation of the bodily self. The present study aims to investigate the malleability of body ownership in preterm ( N = 21) and full-term ( N = 19) school-age children, as reflected by sensitivity to the Rubber Hand Illusion. The results revealed that multisensory processes underlying the ability to identify a rubber hand as being part of one’s own body are already established in childhood, as indicated by a higher subjective feeling of embodiment over the rubber hand during synchronous visual-tactile stimulation. Notably, the effect of visual-tactile synchrony was related to the suppression of the alpha band oscillations over frontal, central, and parietal scalp regions, possibly indicating a greater activation of somatosensory and associative areas underpinning the illusory body ownership. Moreover, an interaction effect between visual-tactile condition and group emerged, suggesting that preterm children showed a greater suppression of alpha oscillatory activity during the illusion. This result together with lower scores of subjective embodiment over the rubber hand reported by preterm children indicate that preterm birth may affect the development of the flexible representation of the body. These findings provide an essential contribution to better understand the processes of identification and differentiation of the bodily self from the external environment, in both full-term and preterm children, paving the way for a multisensory and embodied approach to the investigation of social and cognitive development.
... This and other studies showed that awareness of representations is always present, reflecting the nature and resolution of the representations of a given level, and it always operates as a mechanism of change (Demetriou et al., 2017, in press;Kazi et al., 2019;Spanoudis et al., 2015). Even infants possess awareness of mental processes, such as linguistic awareness, which is part of their language learning mechanism (Rochat, 2003;Vihman, 1985). Our theory aligns with modern theory of consciousness, assuming that awareness of mental content and processes generate subject-level experiences enabling thinkers to ascribe intrinsic values to mental states, thereby allowing choices among them according to their value (Cleeremans & Tallon-Baudry, 2021). ...
This study explored the relations between executive function (several aspects of attention control and working memory), cognizance (awareness of mental processes, theory of mind, language, and memory demand of linguistic structures), and inductive reasoning. Five- to 12-years-old children (N = 197), drawn from each year of age at the numbers required (~N = 25) to ensure the necessary power for the modeling employed, were examined. All processes developed systematically throughout this period, but their form of development and developmental interactions varied across processes. Structural equation modeling showed that all processes are distinct but hierarchically related to a g factor. Decision tree analysis revealed three developmental phases (5, 6–7, and 8–12 years) reflecting differences in the relations between processes: (1) attention control, perception- and language-based cognizance, (2) inference and working memory, and (3) inferential awareness defined ability in the three phases, respectively. Cognizance was crucial in transition from the first to the second phase, mediating between executive and reasoning processes. A new model of cognitive development is outlined, and the theoretical implications are discussed.
... Yano has argued that the answer to the question of what is human can be found in relationships with animals [23]. As children develop, they deepen their self-awareness and change their perceptions of themselves based on the existence of others and by contrasting themselves with others [36]. Children can have opportunities to become aware of themselves as humans by meeting animals in picture books. ...
... • It has been theorized that one aspect of self-awareness that may develop around this time is reputational concern (concern about other's evaluations; Rochat, 2003). ...
With age, children become increasingly capable of using control to regulate their thoughts and actions in the service of goals. However, much remains unknown about how this occurs. Theories emphasize prefrontal cortical development and mechanisms like inhibitory control, active maintenance, and reflection. By contrast, there has been limited consideration of how conceptual factors, such as developing social understanding and self-awareness, may affect how children use executive control. Research suggests self-awareness emerges in infancy but continues to develop during the preschool years (Rochat, 2003). One aspect of self-awareness that may develop between 3 and 4 years of age is reputational concern, or concern about other's evaluations and expectations. Recent studies have shown that even young toddlers may be implicitly aware of others as evaluators and modify their behavior accordingly to please them, and preschoolers exercise control on a delay task if led to believe others (peers, parents) will learn how long they delayed. On the other hand, such reputational concern may develop gradually in the early years (Rochat, 2003), especially as children become better at thinking about other’s perspectives. This may, in turn, lead to changes in how children engage control (e.g., to monitor and regulate their own behavior, possibly with consideration of other’s desires and expectations).
In the current study, we are investigating reputational concern in 3.5- to 5-year-olds and exploring possible relations with executive function, theory of mind, and traditional vs. Montessori education. Data collection is currently underway. Here we report findings related to a measure of reputational concern adapted from prior work (Botto & Rochat, 2018). In our measure, preschoolers watched several video clips in which an experimenter completed two actions on an object, one of which they evaluated positively and one of which they evaluated negatively. Children were then invited to choose any of three actions on the object: the positively-evaluated action, negatively-evaluated action, or a novel action. On half the trials, the experimenter indicated that she will watch while they choose, and on the other half, she indicated that she will not watch. Although being watched did not lead children to exclusively select the positively-valued option, it did lead them to avoid the negatively-valued option. Age predicted both exclusive selection of the positively-valued option and avoidance of the negatively-valued option. Self-awareness, as indexed by reputational concern, appears to develop during the preschool years.
... However, we would argue that parents noticing these changes, is itself a strong sign of potential for connection. All these changes reflect development of the infant's sense of self (Rochat, 2003). When the parents are able to notice these behaviours they are recognising their infant as an individual with their own sense of self, with whom they then have the potential to connect on an intersubjective level (Stern, 1985). ...
During the period of COVID-19 restrictions, we offered vulnerable families with 0 to 3 year old children boxes of art resources and guided creative activities to do together at home. This paper explores families’ experiences of this intervention, highlighting their perceptions of change in wellbeing and attachment. There is a developing case for the social benefits of art, including the impact of arts on mental health and on the wellbeing of children. However, we know that social factors impact upon arts participation, and existing inequalities and mental health difficulties have been exacerbated in the context of the pandemic. This project aimed to adapt to restrictions, to provide a meaningful remote intervention, supporting parent-infant dyads to have positive interactions through art making. We sought to explore the benefits of this intervention for infants and parents with a view to understanding more about the psychological benefits of art participation and about ways to engage families into art making, as well as thinking about how best we can evidence these kinds of arts in health interventions. Preliminary findings showed promising outcomes from the art boxes and this paper brings together the full results, primarily based on interviews with sixteen parents and four referrers alongside collected feedback. We highlight potential mechanisms for change within the intervention and detail the perceived impact of the art boxes in supporting attachment. Parents felt that the art-boxes facilitated changes in their own wellbeing that would make them more available to connection, and recognised changes for babies that reflected their increased capacity to mentalise about their child. Importantly, there were also concrete changes for the dyad that represented improved connection, such as more playful time together and increased shared attention and eye contact. Our observations suggest that the quality of the parent-infant relationship benefited from home-based art intervention, and we speculate about the potential efficacy of this approach beyond the pandemic.
... However, the relevant studies mainly focused on early childhood from birth to 4 or 5 years old and defined six degrees of self-awareness including Confusion (level 0), Differentiation (level 1), Situation (level 2), Identification (level 3), Permanence (level 4), and "Meta" Self-awareness (level 5) [9]. Some researchers also believed that by creating a self-focused environment or being placed in a first-person pronoun context, the children can take responsibility for themselves, thereby temporarily inducing and enhancing their self-awareness [10] [11]. ...
This study aims to explore the influence and induction of five-factor personality traits on self-awareness. 90 participants were recruited as the research subjects and were divided into three groups in this experiment. The results revealed that students’ public and private self-awareness was considerably improved after the personality traits testing. Among the five personality traits, conscientiousness had the strongest inducing ability, followed by extroversion and agreeableness. Personality traits play an essential role in improving self-awareness and evaluating its level. Therefore, this experiment aims to provide suggestions for future studies of social and emotional learning in higher education.
... Based on the mirror self-recognition paradigm, most developmental and comparative psychologists consider that is not prior to ∼18-24 months that children begin to show a sense of self, or self-awareness (for reviews on early self-awareness; see Diehl et al., 2011;Morin, 2021). At this age, however, toddlers only show physical self-awareness which remains relatively inconsistent during months; infants oscillate between self-recognition and the perception of seeing someone else facing them until ∼4 years (see Rochat, 2003). As selfawareness is a prerequisite to the perception of vastness, first awe experiences could not appear before 18-24 months and would more probably emerge after 4 years; they may be slinking and exclusively triggered by physical vastness. ...
... In relation to this aspect, it is important to highlight that these temporary variations allow the agent to progressively build its personal knowledge not only about the entities and events it comes upon, but also about itself. Actually, as it has been observed (Rochat, 2003;Cleeremans, 2008;Ciaunica et al., 2021), the sense of self is not just given, but must be learnt and achieved: it emerges from the continuous process of differentiation between the agent and the other entities. It seems very plausible that, at least for humans, this differentiation process already starts in utero. ...
What distinguishes conscious information processing from other kinds of information processing is its phenomenal aspect (PAC), the-what-it-is-like for an agent to experience something. The PAC supplies the agent with a sense of self, and informs the agent on how its self is affected by the agent’s own operations. The PAC originates from the activity that attention performs to detect the state of what I define “the self” (S). S is centered and develops on a hierarchy of innate and acquired values, and is primarily
expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems; it maps the agent’s body and cognitive capacities, and its interactions with the environment. The detection of the state of S by attention modulates the energy level of the organ of attention (OA), i.e., the neural substrate that underpins attention. This modulation generates the PAC. The PAC can be qualified according to five dimensions: qualitative, quantitative, hedonic, temporal and spatial. Each dimension can be traced back to a specific feature of the modulation of the energy level of the OA.
... Furthermore, they reflect important developments in social-cognition and self-regulation that emerge in the second year of life. During this time, infants become more sophisticated in their ability to follow gaze (Flom & Johnson, 2011), imitate others (Meltzoff & Marshall, 2018), experience self-awareness (Rochat, 2003), and engage in shared intentionality (Tomasello et al., 2005). These developments likely also account for the decrease in time spent in asymmetrical co-regulation from 6-to 18-months in VLBW/preterm and, to a lesser extent, full-term dyads. ...
From birth, mothers and infants co-regulate their interactions that are shaped by their socio-emotional development, relationship history, current circumstances, and goals. However, few studies have longitudinally explored co-regulation in the context of medical and psycho-social risk. The present 4-wave longitudinal study sought to shed light on factors associated with co-regulation over time in infants from 6- to 48-months. The objectives were to 1) identify differences in co-regulation among low- and at-risk infant-mother dyads, 2) explore changes in co-regulation over time, and 3) explore the associations between infant-mother co-regulation and parenting stress in these low- and at-risk groups over time. Participants included three groups of infant-mother dyads (full-term [FT], n = 48; very low birthweight/preterm [VLBW/preterm] born 26–32 weeks, weighing 800–1500 g, n = 61; psycho-socially at-risk where parents had histories of socioeconomic disadvantage, n = 54) followed longitudinally at 6-, 12-, 18-, and 48-months of age. Dyads engaged in a free play in their homes that was coded for co-regulation using Fogel, de Koeyer, Secrist, Sipherd, Hafen, and Fricke’s (2003) Revised Relational Coding System (RRCS), and mothers reported on their level of parenting stress. Results from MANOVAs at each time point indicated significant differences between the groups at 18-months, with psycho-socially at-risk dyads engaging in more one-sided interactions than FT and VLBW/preterm dyads, and more dysregulation and miscommunication than VLBW/preterm dyads. Multi-level models of co-regulation revealed that dyads became progressively less synchronous from 6- to 12-months, followed by greater synchrony and mutual reciprocity from 12-months onwards. Parenting stress was associated with less synchrony and less mutual reciprocity amongst the at-risk groups. Maternal education was associated with greater engagement and girls tended to engage in more synchronous interactions than boys. Our results underscore the value and implications of considering background risk and concurrent parent perceptions in the development and reciprocity of parent-infant co-regulation and their subsequent relationships from infancy onwards.
... Stuttering-like disfluencies typically appear during a period of emerging self-awareness in young children. Around age four, children develop the ability to introspect how their speech-language ability affects themselves (Rochat, 2003). Self-awareness of stuttering and the preference for fluent over disfluent speech is apparent in the early preschool years (Ambrose & Yairi, 1994;Giolas & Williams, 1958). ...
The purpose of this article is to provide a theoretical account of the experience of stuttering that incorporates previous explanations and recent experimental findings. According to this account, stuttering-like disfluencies emerge during early childhood from excessive detection of cognitive conflict due to subtle limitations in speech and language processes. For a subset of children who begin to stutter, the development of approach-avoidance motivational conflict likely contributes to a chronic reliance on cognitive control processes during speech. Consequently, maladaptive activation of right hemisphere inhibitory cortices to the basal ganglia via a hyperdirect pathway results in involuntary, episodic, and transient freezing of the motor system during speech initiation. This freeze response, consistent with defensive behavior in threatening situations, may lead to stuttering persistence, tension and struggle, maladaptive speech physiology, and feelings of anxiety and loss of control.
... Narratives are formed and humans are capable of reflecting and learning from their experiences and experiences of others. age of 2 (Rochat, 2003). It corresponds to implicit systems, neuroanatomically correlated to right hemispheric lateralized structures and unconscious within the autonomic nervous system and body (Schore, 2019). ...
This article introduces a process-oriented approach for improving present moment conceptualization in psychotherapy that is in alignment with neuroscience: the Temporospatial movements of mind (TSMM) model. We elaborate on seven temporal movements that describe the moment-to-moment morphogenesis of emotional feelings and thoughts from inception to maturity. Temporal refers to the passage of time through which feelings and thoughts develop, and electromagnetic activity, that among other responsibilities, bind information across time. Spatial dynamics extend from an undifferentiated to three dimensional experiences of emotional and cognitive processes. Neurophysiologically, spatial refers to structures within the brain and their varying interactions with one another. This article culminates in the development of an atheoretical temporospatial grid that may help clinicians conceptualize where patients are in their cognitive and emotional development to further guide technique.
... Referent power and reciprocity power did not increase consumer content participation as expected. One possible reason is that most consumers in these social commerce communities are the new generation of young (up to 80% under 30 years old in this study) who have a stronger sense of self and greater self-awareness (Rochat, 2003). Although they like these influencers, it is still difficult to evoke their compliance with the influencers' expectations. ...
Purpose
Social commerce platforms are prevalent in the explosion of social media and e-commerce, and they enable conversations across a broad range of topics. However, their success depends on consumers' willingness to invest their time, attention and money. Digital influencers have shown prominent effects on consumers in those social commerce platforms. This study, thus, aims to attempt to unravel the role of digital influencers in affecting consumer engagement and purchase behaviour in online social commerce communities.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed approach with a field interview, an online survey and secondary archive data are presented to confirm all the hypotheses.
Findings
Several forms of social power from digital influencers (including expert power, informational power, referent power and legitimate reciprocity power) could influence consumer engagement behaviours (including content participation and content creation). Moreover, the two types of consumer engagement behaviours could further influence consumer purchase likelihood in the social commerce community.
Research limitations/implications
Several forms of social power from digital influencers (including expert power, informational power, referent power and legitimate reciprocity power) could affect consumer engagement behaviours (including content participation and content creation). Moreover, the two types of consumer engagement behaviours could further affect consumer's purchase expenditure in the social commerce community.
Originality/value
This study draws on the theories of social power and social influence and integrates the literature on consumer engagement to explain how digital influencers affect consumer engagement and their purchase behaviour in an online social commerce community. Firstly, this work extends existing studies on the antecedents of consumer engagement in the social commerce communities by considering the role of digital influencers. Secondly, this research advances the theoretical understanding of the influence of digital influencers through a new lens of social power. The findings also contribute to community managers, users who pursue popularity and companies who target business goals.
Development of children’s self-perception starts from infancy period. Purpose of thisresearchinvestigatesthe effects of variables such as family attitudes, peer acceptance, age, gender and presence of family elders at home on the self-perception of children aged 3-6 years. Research’s sample consists of 140 children and their families in Ankara. The "DeMoulin Self-Perception Test" adapted to Turkish by Turaşlı (2014), The "Parental Attitude Scale" developed by Şendil (2008)and sociometry have been used in this research. As a result; this research have indicated children’s self-perception effects from age, peer acceptance and presence of family elders at home.
Previous studies reveal that children's metacognitive skills make massive progress during the early childhood period. We believe that examining how children use metacognitive skills in the learning process is crucial for shaping future learning experiences. This case study explores how children's metacognitive knowledge emerges through peer interactions in mathematical measurement activities. Sixteen activities based on the dimensions of mathematical measurement skills of length, area, weight, and volume were applied and video recorded. We systematically observed two 5-year-old children in these activities for 10 weeks. A framework of analysis was developed from the results of previous research on children's metacognition. Children's metacognitive knowledge was analyzed in mathematical statements and other variables were also extracted. Using qualitative analysis, this study indicates how children's mathematical thinking skills are reflected in their expressions of metacognitive knowledge during peer interactions. Difficulties in assessing and measuring children's metacognition are also discussed.
Internal computational models of physical bodies are fundamental to the ability of robots and animals alike to plan and control their actions. These “self-models” allow robots to consider outcomes of multiple possible future actions without trying them out in physical reality. Recent progress in fully data-driven self-modeling has enabled machines to learn their own forward kinematics directly from task-agnostic interaction data. However, forward kinematic models can only predict limited aspects of the morphology, such as the position of end effectors or velocity of joints and masses. A key challenge is to model the entire morphology and kinematics without prior knowledge of what aspects of the morphology will be relevant to future tasks. Here, we propose that instead of directly modeling forward kinematics, a more useful form of self-modeling is one that could answer space occupancy queries, conditioned on the robot’s state. Such query-driven self-models are continuous in the spatial domain, memory efficient, fully differentiable, and kinematic aware and can be used across a broader range of tasks. In physical experiments, we demonstrate how a visual self-model is accurate to about 1% of the workspace, enabling the robot to perform various motion planning and control tasks. Visual self-modeling can also allow the robot to detect, localize, and recover from real-world damage, leading to improved machine resiliency.
There is an unmet need for developing a new class of smart medical implants with novel properties and advanced functionalities. Here, the concept of “self‐aware implants” is proposed to enable the creation of a new generation of multifunctional metamaterial implantable devices capable of responding to their environment, empowering themselves, and self‐monitoring their condition. These functionalities are achieved via integrating nano energy harvesting and mechanical metamaterial design paradigms. Various aspects of the proposed concept are highlighted by developing proof‐of‐concept interbody spinal fusion cage implants with self‐sensing, self‐powering, and mechanical tunability features. Bench‐top testing is performed using synthetic biomimetic and human cadaver spine models to evaluate the electrical and mechanical performance of the developed patient‐specific metamaterial implants. The results show that the self‐aware cage implants can diagnose bone healing process using the voltage signals generated internally through their built‐in contact‐electrification mechanisms. The voltage and current generated by the implants under the axial compression forces of the spine models reach 9.2 V and 4.9 nA, respectively. The metamaterial implants can serve as triboelectric nanogenerators to empower low‐power electronics. The capacity of the proposed technology to revolutionize the landscape of implantable devices and to achieve better surgical outcomes is further discussed.
In which stage of development does a human being become conscious of himself? Does such self-consciousness require symbolic mediation? In this article, we analyze the problem of children's self-consciousness in light of Peirce and Rochat's contributions on the topic. We reconstruct Peirce's ideas, addressing the problem of discursive and intuitive cognitions. We put, then, the thesis that there is no self-consciousness in young children in face of Rochat's developmental research, which suggests that there are levels of mental states and self-knowledge that cross discursive and non-discursive levels of experience, requiring a review of the thesis of Peirce. In the end, we show the intersubjective or social character of self-consciousness, which happens constitutively with "others in mind".
Resumo: A principal crítica do internismo a teorias externistas é que elas parecem fazer o conhecimento o resultado de processos que permanecem inacessíveis ao sujeito. Epistemologias externistas buscaram acomodar esta exigência, como é o caso da epistemologia de Sosa. A incorporação das exigências internistas não se faz sem tensões - no caso de Sosa, os mecanismos reflexivos podem ser inacessíveis ao sujeito. Na medida em que buscamos compreender como podemos conhecer e refletir sobre nossas próprias crenças, encontramos mecanismos externos ao sujeito que não podem ser internalizados: a dinâmica conversacional e o conhecimento científico dos mecanismos de funcionamento da cognição. A externalização do saber se estende para o conhecimento cientifico de maneira muito ampla. Uma pessoa que só tomasse como verdadeiro aquilo que pode provar (ou mesmo que pode compreender) seria alguém que recusaria boa parte do saber humano. Para todo leigo - isto é, para todo mundo, num ou noutro domínio -, assumir o que é produzido pela cultura é tomar como verdadeiras crenças cujo conteúdo resta opaco. Como exige um internista, o funcionamento interacional da razão não envolve mecanismos cegos à perspectiva do sujeito e não conceitualizados, mas, ao contrário, leva precisamente à articulação e à tomada de consciência das teses apresentadas. Este conhecimento não pode, contudo, ser internalizado. A externalização do conhecimento é um traço profundo do conhecimento e, mais geralmente, da cultura humana. No contexto de uma teoria evolutiva da cultura, muitos autores defendem, de diferentes modos, que a cultura humana é essencialmente social. O que talvez não seja tão usual seja conectar teorias mais gerais da evolução da cultura com preocupações tradicionais da epistemologia. Espero mostrar que este é um caminho frutífero.
This paper describes 20 years of microtia and craniofacial microsomia (CFM) psychosocial and healthcare studies and suggests directions for clinical care and research.
A narrative review of papers January 2000 to July 2021 related to psychosocial and healthcare experiences of individuals with microtia and CFM and their families.
Studies (N = 64) were mainly cross-sectional (69%), included a range of standardized measures (64%), and were with European (31%), American (27%), or multinational (23%) samples. Data were generally collected from both patients and caregivers (38%) or patient self-report (35%). Sample sizes were 11 to 25 (21%), 26 to 50 (19%), 51 to 100 (22%), or over 100 (38%). Studies addressed 5 primary topics: (1) Healthcare Experiences, including Medical Care, Hearing Loss/Amplification, Diagnostic Experiences, and Information Preferences; (2) Psychosocial Experiences, including Teasing, Behavioral Adjustment, Psychosocial Support, and Public Perception; (3) Neurocognitive Functioning and Academic Assistance; (4) Pre- and Post-Operative Psychosocial Outcomes of Ear Reconstruction/Canaloplasty; and (5) Quality of Life and Patient Satisfaction.
Care involved multiple specialties and was often experienced as stressful starting at diagnosis. Psychosocial and neurocognitive functioning were generally in the average range, with possible risk for social and language concerns. Coping and resiliency were described into adulthood. Satisfaction and positive benefit of ear reconstruction/canaloplasty were high. Care recommendations include increasing: hearing amplification use, microtia and CFM knowledge among providers, efficient treatment coordination, psychosocial support, academic assistance, and advances to minimize surgical scarring. This broad literature overview informs clinical practice and research to improve psychosocial outcomes.
The present article deals with an influx of coinages which are employed in the different domains of life and being established as Arabic words and ignoring their source languages. Their access to the Arabic language came due to importing new industrial products with their mosaic labels which let people hire them in their daily interlocutions. When such diversified products are exported to Arab countries – specifically Iraq, the Iraqis recruit the same labels as came from the origin country without finding any Arabic equivalent words for them. In doing so, they became borrowed words to
Iraqi Arabic and some people think that they are already Arabic words.
The aim of this research is to investigate those words and classify them into fields, then check up how people use them and how some of them turned to be slang not standard. Exploring such words also requires knowing whether they underwent morphophonemic changes of their structural templates or semantic shifts. A gloss of various words is
employed in order to endorse the value of the study and give it more elegant flavor.
Background
A primary, pre-reflective form of self-awareness develops during the first two years of life, through sensory perceptions and bodily and social experiences. Although this is a central dimension in the development of children with PIMD, no tools are available to guide caregivers’ observations.
Aims
To present the development procedure and the results of the first validation step of a battery aimed at direct observation of primary self-awareness behaviors in children with PIMD.
Methods and procedure
We built a criterion-referenced tool composed of five scales proposed in two complementary lists. The first list comprises inducing standardized tasks; the second natural observation situations. The battery was administered three times to 18 children with PIMD.
Outcomes and results
The inducing tasks list was shown to be reliable, with good internal consistency, inter- and intra-rater reliability, high procedural reliability and high test-retest reliability. The natural observation situations list has a lower internal consistency, but high test-retest reliability. The social validity of both lists is deemed to be excellent.
Conclusion and implications
The tool looks promising. Even if these first results need to be confirmed by further research, it opens up perspectives for assessment and intervention on a key dimension of human functioning.
This paper considers language evolution from a cognitive-grammar (CG) perspective taking Classical Arabic Case Marking (CACM) as a case in point and a departure point. It is argued that the accusative case is diachronically the baseline case mark, designating the Objective Scene (OS) and demarcating an object of perception in the initial stage of maximal subjectivity in which the ground (G) is totally implicit. Such maximum is then attenuated through a process of objectification such that g entities are gradually put onstage to fulfill the functions of identification and predication . The nominative case, then, figures to mark such emerging entities in their baseline, immediate status. This conception of G with its functions is later extended to mark entities external to G, which gives rise to the full, nominative-marked, baseline existential core (C ∃ ) comprising the existential predicate (P ∃ ) and the existential subject (S ∃ ). The truncation (T) of a verb’s nominative case is argued to fulfill the semantic function of situating a process out of existential reality yielding the existential predicate minus (P- ∃ ), which represents a basic elaboration on baseline C ∃ . Processes being extensions from perception, the accusative case attenuates to mark entities (D) that demarcate processes, implementing the semantic function of processual modification . Finally, a genitive-marked entity (RP) is proposed to implement the semantic function of referential modification, anchoring and referencing the conceptions of all those facets of reality.
Self-awareness, at any stage, is very important in an individual's life as it includes the recognition of cognitive-and social-, as well as emotional intelligence within the self. Results from this study indicate that during adolescence - students become very much aware of themselves which, in turn, attests to the requirement of a proper development of their self-awareness.
Attachment theory is built on the assumption of consistency; the mother-infant bond is thought to underpin the life-long representations individuals construct of attachment relationships. Still, consistency in the individual’s neural response to attachment-related stimuli representing his or her entire relational history has not been investigated. Mothers and children were followed across two decades and videotaped in infancy (3-6 months), childhood (9-12 years), and young adulthood (18-24 years). In adulthood, participants underwent fMRI while exposed to videos of own mother-child interactions (Self) versus unfamiliar interactions (Other). Self-stimuli elicited greater activations across preregistered nodes of the human attachment network, including thalamus-to-brainstem, amygdala, hippocampus, ACC, insula, and temporal cortex. Critically, self-stimuli were age-invariant in most ROIs despite large variability in social behavior and Bayesian analysis showed strong evidence for lack of age-related differences. PPI analysis indicated that self-stimuli elicited tighter connectivity between ACC and anterior insula, consolidating an interface associating information from exteroceptive and interceptive sources to sustain attachment representations. Child social engagement behavior was individually stable from infancy to adulthood and linked with greater ACC and insula response to self-stimuli. Findings demonstrate overlap in circuits sustaining parental and child attachment and accord with perspectives on the continuity of attachment across human development.
This chapter presents and extends a model of human socio-emotional development that we have recently proposed (Gergely & Watson, 1996). Our model gains its uniqueness by the fact that even though it embraces the common assumption that young infants are sensitive to contingency experience, at the same time, it rejects the general view that they are initially perceptually aware of their specific basic emotion states. Indeed, it is our contention that contingency detection is crucially involved in an infant's progressively developing awareness of his or her internal affective states. More specifically, our "social-biofeedback model" holds that the caregiver's contingent reflections of the infant's emotion expressive dis- plays play a central causal role in the development of emotional self-aware- ness and control that is mediated by the contingency detection module.
We begin by trying to make very clear what we mean by contingency perception, contingency seeking, and its special limitation to perceivable contin- gencies, because we shall place considerable theoretical weight on these foundational constructs. We then consider the implications of this view of early contingency perception when conjoined with an assumption that an infant begins life with little or no awareness of his or her dispositional states. That leads us to our social-biofeedback model of how the infant progressively becomes aware of his or her emotional dispositions through the process previously identified as social mirroring. Our model includes an assumption about a change in the target magnitude of contingency seeking that appears to occur at about 3 months of age. The possible relevance of this for the understanding of the deviant developmental pat- tern in autism is also briefly considered.
It is proposed that from birth, and long before mirror self-recognition, infants manifest a sense of self as a differentiated and situated entity in the environment. In support of this view, observations are reported suggesting that neonates discriminate between external and self-stimulation. Five newborns and 11 4-week-old infants were observed when they spontaneously brought one hand to their face, touching one of their cheeks (self-stimulation), or when the index finger of the experimenter touched one of the infant's cheeks (external stimulation). Microanalysis revealed that infants responded differentially to the two types of stimulation. Newborns tended to display significantly more rooting responses (i.e., head turn towards the stimulation with mouth open and tonguing) following external compared to self-stimulation. Four-week-old infants demonstrated an opposite pattern. These data are discussed as evidence of an innate ability to discriminate between self versus externally caused stimulation. The differential expression of this ability at birth and at 4 weeks is considered in relation to learning opportunities and the emergence of new functional goals guiding infant behaviour. ©1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Discusses the idea of the self as it relates to time during childhood conceptual development. Specific mention is given to J. Piaget's
Play, Dreams, and Imitation in Children, in which he describes two incidents involving the reactions of his daughter to her own image. The author reinterprets Piaget's daughter's comments in light of recent research that has explored the child's developing understanding of the self's place in time. It is proposed that those comments discussed may be emblematic of the unique manner in which very young children conceive of the self—a manner that does not include the idea that the self extends in time. The use of mirrors, video images, and photographs as tools to reveal transitions in the development of an adult-like understanding of the temporal breadth of the self is examined. The author further proposes that the development of an explicit and temporally extended self-concept can be understood as a developmentally complex process, tapping different conceptual and attentional structures at different ages. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A hypothesized 5-stage developmental sequence of self-recognition behaviors was tested in 48 infants between 6 and 24 mo of age, and the self-recognition sequence was compared to the development of object permanence. The predicted self-recognition sequence consisted of 5 tasks that Ss performed in front of the mirror, with later-developing tasks requiring the coordination of a larger number of behaviors relating to S's mirror image than earlier-developing tasks. The development of object permanence was assessed with the Uzgiris-Hunt scale, and the object-permanence items were assigned to stages that structurally paralleled the 5 stages of self-recognition. The self-recognition tasks formed an almost perfect Guttman scale, with 46 out of 48 Ss fitting the predicted developmental sequence precisely. This finding thus resolves most of the disagreements in previous research on the development of self-recognition: Previous studies examined different behaviors, which develop at distinct stages in the sequence. Object permanence and self-recognition showed a strong correlation, but there was no consistent relationship between the 2 skills across age groups. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
To date humans, chimpanzees, and orangutans are the only species which have been shown capable of recognizing themselves in mirrors. Several species of macaques have now been provided with years of continuous exposure to mirrors, but they still persist in reacting to their reflection as if they were seeing other monkeys. Even gibbons (apes) and gorillas (great apes) seem incapable of learning that their behavior is the source of the behavior depicted in the image. Most primates, therefore, appear to lack a cognitive category for processing mirrored information about themselves. The implications of these data for traditional views of consciousness are considered briefly, and a recent attempt to develop an operant analog to self-recognition is critically evaluated. Finally, an attempt is made to show that self-awareness, consciousness, and mind are not mutually exclusive cognitive categories and that the emergence of self-awareness may be equivalent to the emergence of mind. Several indices of “mind” which can be applied to nonhuman species are discussed in the context of an attempt to develop a comparative psychology of mind.
Before one can understand or use any symbol, one must first realize that it is a symbol, that is, that it stands for or represents something other than itself. This article reports 4 studies investigating very young children's understanding of 2 different kinds of symbolic stimuli—scale models and pictures. The data replicate previous findings that 2.5-year-old children have great difficulty appreciating the relation between a scale model and the larger space it represents, but that they very readily appreciate the relation between a picture and its referent. This result is interpreted in terms of the dual orientation hypothesis. Models are difficult for young children because they require a dual representation—a child must think about a model both as an object itself and as a representation of something else. Because pictures are not salient as real objects, they do not require a dual representation. Several kinds of evidence supporting the dual orientation hypothesis are presented. An additional result was the occurrence of a transfer effect: Prior experience with a picture task led to better performance on a subsequent model task. This finding suggests that experience with a symbolic medium they understand can help young children figure out a different, unfamiliar medium that they would otherwise not understand.
In three studies we investigated the question of whether children consider the attributes of the artist (sentience, age level, affective style, emotion) when making judgments about the traces (drawings) made by that artist. In Study 1, 2–5-year-old children were asked to find pictures drawn by a machine, an adult, an older and a younger child. Results indicated that children younger than 4 years do not consider the artists' attributes when making judgments, but 4- and 5-year-olds do. Furthermore, whereas the oldest children were adept at both machine-person (sentience) and person-person (age) contrasts, 4-year-olds succeeded only with person-person contrasts. In Study 2, videotaped artists displayed differences in degree of agitation (affective style) while drawing, and this attribute was manipulated in the drawing by varying line density, asymmetry, line overlap and line gap, or all four features, across stimuli. Three- and five-year-old children judged whether a calm or agitated person drew the stimuli. Findings showed that five-year-old, but not 3-year-old, children easily completed the task. In Study 3, 3-, 5- and 7-year-old children judged whether happy or sad artists made paintings of matching emotional tone. Performance on this picture judgment task was contrasted with performance on three theory of mind tasks (false belief, emotion and interpretative). The results indicated that 5- and 7-year-olds successfully judged the impact of artists' emotions on paintings, but 3-year-olds did not. Performance on the picture task was related to that on the false belief task, but not to the emotion or interpretive tasks. Taken together, the results suggest that children's view of visual symbols includes a consideration of the qualities of the artist beginning around 5 years, and there appears to be a common link between judgments of the mind behind the visual symbol in the picture task and judgments of mental state reasoning in the false belief task.
This research investigated the development of visual self-recognition in infancy. Prior research has investigated infants' self-perception in mirror or live video stimulation in which visual-proprioceptive contingency is available. No research, however, has addressed the young infants' ability to recognize his or her own face on the basis of featural information. Infants of 2, 3, 5, and 8 months of age viewed video films of their own face side by side with that of a peer. The faces were presented under both moving and still conditions. Results indicated that by the age of 3 months, infants discriminated the self from the peer and demonstrated a significant visual preference for the face of the peer, This suggests that infants already are familiar with their own visual appearance by 3 months of age. Given that most infants had received at least daily exposure to their mirror image, it was hypothesized that featural recognition of the self developed through mirror exposure. It was further suggested that viewing one's face in the context of the contingency provided by the mirror serves as a basis for perceiving the face as belonging to the self.
Before one can understand or use any symbol, one must first realize that it is a symbol, that is, that it stands for or represents something other than itself. This article reports 4 studies investigating very young children's understanding of 2 different kinds of symbolic stimuli--scale models and pictures. The data replicate previous findings that 2.5-year-old children have great difficulty appreciating the relation between a scale model and the larger space it represents, but that they very readily appreciate the relation between a picture and its referent. This result is interpreted in terms of the dual orientation hypothesis. Models are difficult for young children because they require a dual representation--a child must think about a model both as an object itself and as a representation of something else. Because pictures are not salient as real objects, they do not require a dual representation. Several kinds of evidence supporting the dual orientation hypothesis are presented. An additional result was the occurrence of a transfer effect: Prior experience with a picture task led to better performance on a subsequent model task. This finding suggests that experience with a symbolic medium they understand can help young children figure out a different, unfamilar medium that they would otherwise not understand.
Since Darwin, the idea of intellectual continuity has gripped comparative psychology. Psychological evolution has been viewed as the accumulation of gradual changes over time, resulting in an unbroken chain of mental capacities throughout the diversity of life. Some researchers have even maintained that no fundamental psychological differences exist among species. An alternative model argues that a rather profound new psychology related to mental state attribution may have evolved recently in the primate order. The author explores recent experimental research from chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, and children that is consistent with this second model of psychological evolution. Drawing on the fields of developmental, comparative, and social psychology, as well as evolutionary and developmental biology, the author outlines a research agenda aimed at reconstructing the evolution of metacognition.
Thirty-six 2-, 4-, and 6-month-old infants were videotaped while interacting with a female adult stranger engaging in either organized or disorganized 1-min peekaboo games. Two-month-old infants gazed and smiled equally at the stranger, regardless of the relative organization of the peekaboo game. In contrast, 4- and 6-month-old infants smiled significantly more and gazed significantly less in the organized peekaboo condition than in the disorganized peekaboo condition. These results suggest that from a diffuse sensitivity to the presence of a social partner, infants by 4 months develop a new sensitivity to the narrative envelope of protoconversation, in particular the timing and the structure of social exchanges scaffolded by adults. These observations are interpreted as evidence of developing social expectations in the first 6 months of life. This early development is viewed as announcing and preparing the communicative competence that blossoms by the end of the 1st year.
Infants between 12 and 21 days of age can imitate both facial and manual gestures; this behavior cannot be explained in terms of either conditioning or innate releasing mechanisms. Such imitation implies that human neonates can equate their own unseen behaviors with gestures they see others perform.
Two-month-olds and newborns were tested in a situation where they had the opportunity to experience different auditory consequences of their own oral activity on a dummy pacifier. Modulation of oral activity was scored and analyzed relative to two types of contingent auditory feedback, either analog or non-analog to the effort exerted by the infant on the pacifier. The dummy pacifier was connected to an air pressure transducer for recording of oral action. In two different experimental conditions, each time the infant sucked above a certain pressure threshold they heard a perfectly contingent sound of varying pitch. In one condition, the pitch variation was analog to the pressure applied by the infant on the pacifier (analog condition). In another, the pitch variation was random (non-analog condition). As rationale, a differential modulation of oral activity in these two conditions was construed as indexing some voluntary control and the sense of a causal link between sucking and its auditory consequences, beyond mere temporal contingency detection and response-stimulus association. Results indicated that 2-month-olds showed clear signs of modulation of their oral activity on the pacifier as a function of analog versus non-analog condition. In contrast, newborns did not show any signs of such modulation either between experimental conditions (analog versus non-analog contingent sounds) or between baseline (no contingent sounds condition) and experimental conditions. These observations are interpreted as evidence of self-exploration and the emergence of a sense of self-agency by 2 months of age.
1 The Origins of Self.- Social Cognition.- Duality of Self.- Theoretical Accounts of the Origins of Self.- Self Knowledge and Self Awareness.- Plan of This Volume.- 2 Mirror Representations of Self.- Mirror Study I.- Mirror Study II.- 3 Videotape Representations of Self and Others.- Videotape Study I.- Videotape Study II.- 4 Pictorial Representations of Self and Others.- Picture Study I.- Picture Study II.- 5 Verbal Labeling of Self and Others.- Labeling Study I.- Labeling Study II 150.- 6 Individual Differences in the Expression of Self Recognition.- 7 Self Recognition and Emotional Development.- A Definition of Emotion.- The Ontogenesis of Emotional Experience and Self Knowledge.- 8 The Development of Self Recognition.- Representational Forms of the Self.- Criteria for Self Recognition.- The Ontogeny of Self Recognition.- Individual Differences in the Development of Self Recognition.- 9 Toward a Theory of the Development of Self.- Self Development.- Self, Interaction, and Other: The Onset of Social Cognition.- Three Principles of Social Cognition.- Social Dimensions and the Categorical Self.- 10 The Uses of a Theory of Self.- The Ontogeny of Thought: A Sociobiological Approach.- The Role of Self in Cognition.- The Self-Other Distinction.- Self and Interaction.- References.- Author Index.
Two experiments compared 6-month-old infants as they reach for an object. All were proficient reachers but with different levels of sitting ability. The object was presented at various distances, within and beyond reach of the infant. In the first experiment, the scaling of perceived reachability in infants with different postural abilities (i.e. non-sitter, near-sitter, and sitter infants) was explored. The second experiment investigated the role of proprioception in the scaling of perceived reachability by non-sitter and sitter infants. In general, results suggest that perceived reachability is calibrated in relation to the degree of postural control achieved by the infant. Infants demonstrate a sense of their own situation in the environment as well as a sense of their own body effectivities. Both determine the execution, or non-execution, of reaching for a distal object by young infants. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
recent work in developmental psychology has shown that young children explain and predict behaviour in terms of every-day mental concepts, notably beliefs and desires / from this evidence, some have concluded that children adopt a theory of mind / I shall argue instead that children engage in an increasingly sophisticated process of mental simulation that allows them to make quasi-theoretical predictions
mental simulation depends on the capacity to engage in two successive steps: (1) to imagine having a particular desire of belief, and (2) to imagine the actions, thoughts or emotions that would ensue if one were to have those desires or beliefs / the products of such a simulation can then be attributed to other people who do have the simulated desires or beliefs
my analysis incorporates the notion of role-taking . . . but seeks to show how such a process might operate in early childhood / it provides a framework for interpreting two reasonably well-established facts: (1) the increasing accuracy with which children can diagnose mental states, and (2) the deficits shown by autistic children in making such diagnoses
the capacity for pretence / reasoning with pretend premises / altering default settings (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Although the mirror is often discussed in relation to social and personality development, its perceptual properties have not been addressed. A review of relevant literature shows that mirror behavior has been explained primarily in terms of the development of “self-concept,” however, discontinuities in the mirror behavior of young children suggest a lengthy process of perceptual exploration is taking place, in which the relationship of perception and action before the mirror is discovered. Drawing on the principles of ecological optics, this article analyzes the information available from the mirror and how the mirror differs from other sources of stimulation. The mirror is described as a tool for mediated perception. It is argued that learning to use a mirror to locate things seen in it (including the self) depends heavily on discovering the mirror's “affordances”—its functional significance for the perceiver. The process of learning the mirror's affordances is examined.
Two-month-olds and newborns were tested in a situation where they had the opportunity to experience different auditory consequences of their own oral activity on a dummy pacifier. Modulation of oral activity was scored and analyzed relative to two types of contingent auditory feedback, either analog or non-analog to the effort exerted by the infant on the pacifier. The dummy pacifier was connected to an air pressure transducer for recording of oral action. In two different experimental conditions, each time the infant sucked above a certain pressure threshold they heard a perfectly contingent sound of varying pitch. In one condition, the pitch variation was analog to the pressure applied by the infant on the pacifier (analog condition). In another, the pitch variation was random (non-analog condition). As rationale, a differential modulation of oral activity in these two conditions was construed as indexing some voluntary control and the sense of a causal link between sucking and its auditory consequences, beyond mere temporal contingency detection and response–stimulus association. Results indicated that 2-month-olds showed clear signs of modulation of their oral activity on the pacifier as a function of analog versus non-analog condition. In contrast, newborns did not show any signs of such modulation either between experimental conditions (analog versus non-analog contingent sounds) or between baseline (no contingent sounds condition) and experimental conditions. These observations are interpreted as evidence of self-exploration and the emergence of a sense of self-agency by 2 months of age.
Reviews the book, Play, Dreams and Imitation in Childhood by Jean Piaget (1951). The current work by Piaget is another stimulating and provocative contribution to the literature on the development of children's thinking. In this well-translated volume, Piaget has as his basic goal an explanation of the evolution of "representative activity," which is "characterized by the fact that it goes beyond the present, extending the field of adaptation both in space and in time." Such an activity is essential in reflective thought as well as in operational thought. Two theses are presented by Piaget in the book: (a) the transition from rudimentary, primitive, and situational assimilation of experience to the operational and reflective adaptation of experience can be studied by the analysis of imitative behavior and play activity of the child from very early months of the life; and (b) various forms of mental activity--imitation, symbolic activity, and cognitive representation--are interacting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Much of young children's symbolic play is heavily scaffolded by adult symbolic action models, which children may imitate, and by adult verbal scripts. The current studies attempted to evaluate 18-35-month-old children's symbolic skills in the absence of such scaffolding. In a study of symbol comprehension, children were tested for their ability to comprehend an adult's use of either a replica object or an associated gesture to communicate which object in an array she wanted. In a study of symbol production, children were given some objects that afforded symbolic manipulations, but without adult symbolic action models or verbal scripts. The results of the two studies converged to suggest that children below 2 years of age have symbolic skills with gestures, but not with objects. It was also found that while children at 26 months were able to use an object as a symbol for another object, they had difficulties when the symbol had another conventional use (e.g. a drinking cup used as a hat). The findings are discussed in terms of DeLoache's dual representation model, and a modification of that model is proposed.
Facial imitation was investigated in infants 6 weeks and 2 to 3 months of age. Three findings emerged: (a) early imitation did not vary as a function of familiarity with the model—infants imitated a stranger as well as their own mothers; (b) infants imitated both static facial postures and dynamic facial gestures; and (c) there was no disappearance of facial imitation in the 2- to 3-month age range, contrary to previous reports. Two broad theoretical points are developed. First, a proposal is made about the social and psychological functions that early imitation serves in infants' encounters with people. It is argued that infants deploy imitation to enrich their understanding of persons and actions and that early imitation is used for communicative purposes. Second, a theoretical bridge is formed between early imitation and the “object concept.” The bridge is formed by considering the fundamental role that identity plays in infants' understanding of people and things. One of the psychological functions that early imitation subserves is to identify people. Infants use the nonverbal behavior of people as an identifier of who they are and use imitation as a means of verifying this identity. Data and theory are adduced in favor of viewing early imitation as an act of social cognition.
Research is presented suggesting that an implicit sense of self is developing from birth, long before children begin to manifest explicit (conceptual) self-knowledge by the second year. Implicit self-knowledge in infancy is rooted in intermodal perception and action. Studies are reported showing that at least from 2 months of age, infants become increasingly systematic and deliberate in the exploration of their own body and the perceptual consequences of self-produced action. From such exploration, infants develop a sense of their own body as a differentiated entity, situated and agent in the environment. Based on recent empirical findings, the perceptual determinants of such implicit sense of self are discussed.
Three studies are reported, investigating changes in body engagement by 5- to 6-month-old infants as they reach for objects in the environment. Infants are distinguished and compared based on their relative ability to maintain a sitting posture without any external body support. The first study demonstrates that manual reaching by sitter infants is coordinated with forward leaning of the trunk, whereas reaching by nonsitters is not. The second study demonstrates that nonsitter infants provided with hip support also show signs of a coordination between reaching of the hand and forward leaning of the trunk. The third study compares nonsitter, nearsitter, and sitter infants as they reach for multiple objects spread across their prehensile space. Results demonstrate expansion in the mapping of infants' prehensile space and hand use as a function of self-sitting ability. The reported results are discussed as expressions of the interaction between the development of postural, perceptual, and action systems in infancy.
In this study we sought to determine the degree to which 2- to 3-year-old children use objects symbolically in the relative absence of adult symbolic actions or linguistic descriptions, and how the nature of objects influences symbolic play. Results revealed a dramatic increase in children’s creative symbolic productions between 2 and 3 years of age, with the tendency to produce symbolic actions influenced to an equal degree by adult symbolic action models and verbal directions. Children of all ages were heavily influenced by the nature of the object to be used as a symbol, with the youngest children using only replica objects as symbols. In a second study, we examined children’s looks to an adult as they engaged in different kinds of activities with objects. The main finding was that children looked to the adult immediately after performing a symbolic action more often than if they performed an instrumental action. We argue for the essentially social nature of symbolic play, both in terms of how children learn to use objects as symbols and in terms of the reasons they do so.
The effect of conflicting visual, and mechanical proprioceptive information on postural stability was compared in two groups of infants. The older group could sit or stand unsupported, while the younger group could sit but could not yet stand. The results suggest that visual proprioception functions to maintain postural stability before infants have learned to stand.
Infants between 12 and 21 days of age can imitate both facial and manual gestures; this behavior cannot be explained in terms
of either conditioning or innate releasing mechanisms. Such imitation implies that human neonates can equate their own unseen
behaviors with gestures they see others perform.
The behavior of 88 children between 3 and 24 months was observed before a mirror, using an objective technique to examine the child's awareness of the image as his own. The results indicate the following age-related sequence of behavior before the mirror: the first prolonged and repeated reaction of an infant to his mirror image is that of a sociable “playmate” from about 6 through 12 months of age. In the second year of life wariness and withdrawal appeared; self-admiring and embarrassed behavior accompanied those avoidance behaviors starting at 14 months, and was shown by 75% of the subjects after 20 months of age. During the last part of the second year of life, from 20 to 24 months of age, 65% of the subjects demonstrated recognition of their mirror images.
Human neonates (average age, 36 hours) discriminated three facial expressions (happy, sad, and surprised) posed by a live
model as evidenced by diminished visual fixation on each face over trials and renewed fixations to the presentation of a different
face. The expressions posed by the model, unseeen by the observer, were guessed at greater than chance accuracy simply by
observing the face of the neonate, whose facial movements in the brow, eyes, and mouth regions provided evidence for imitation
of the facial expressions.