Philippe Rochat

Five levels of self-awareness as they unfold early in life

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 childrens 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.

Object manipulation and exploration in 2- to 5-month-old infants

The early development of explorarory behavior was studied. One study documents changes in free exploration of infants aged from 2 to 5 months. Another compares 3and 4-5 month-olds when manipulating and exploring an object in the light or in the dark (no visual control over exploration). The third study compares multimodal exploration in 3and 4-month-olds when presented with two different objects varying in multiple properties. Results show that significant changes occur between 2 and 5 months, relative to spontaneous multimodal exploration of a novel object. Object exploration becomes increasingly multimodal. Bimanual coordination is first linked to the oral system, later reorganized in reference to vision when fingering emerges by 4 months. Manipulation in 3-montholds is shown to be object-dependent. Factors controlling early object manipulation and functional changes in manual action prior to 6 months of age are discussed.

Synchrony in the Onset of Mental-State Reasoning Evidence From Five Cultures

Over the past 20 years, developmental psychologists have shown considerable interest in the onset of a theory of mind, typically marked by childrens ability to pass false-belief tasks. In Western cultures, children pass such tasks around the age of 5 years, with variations of the tasks producing small changes in the age at which they are passed. Knowing whether this age of transition is common across diverse cultures is important to understanding what causes this development. Cross-cultural studies have produced mixed findings, possibly because of varying methods used in different cultures. The present study used a single procedure to measure false-belief understanding in five cultures: Canada, India, Peru, Samoa, and Thailand. With a standardized procedure, we found synchrony in the onset of mentalistic reasoning, with children crossing the false-belief milestone at approximately 5 years of age in every culture studied. The meaning of this synchrony for the origins of mental-state understanding is discussed.

Self-Sitting and Reaching in 5- to 8-Month-Old Infants: The Impact of Posture and Its Development on Early Eye-Hand Coordination

The relation between progress in the control of posture (i.e., the achievement of self-sitting posture) and the developmental transition from two-handed to one-handed engagement in infant reaching was investigated. Two groups of 5- to 8-month-old infants, who were either able or yet unable to sit on their own, were videotaped while they reached for objects in four different posture conditions that provided varying amounts of body support. Videotapes of infant reaches were microanalyzed to determine the relative engagement of both hands during reaches. Results demonstrate the interaction between postural development and the morphology of infant reaching. Nonsitting infants displayed symmetrical and synergistic engagement of both arms and hands while reaching in all but the seated posture condition. Sitting infants, by contrast, showed asymmetrical and lateralized (one-handed) reaches in all posture conditions. Results also show that, aside from posture, the perceived spatial arrangement of the object display is a determinant of infant reaching. Combined, these results are discussed as evidence for the interaction between postural and perceptual development in the control of early eye-hand coordination.

Self-perception and action in infancy

Abstract By 2–3 months, infants engage in exploration of their own body as it moves and acts in the environment. They babble and touch their own body, attracted and actively involved in investigating the rich intermodal redundancies, temporal contingencies, and spatial congruence of self-perception. Recent research is presented, which investigats the spatial and temporal determinants of self-perception and action infancy. This research shows that, in the course of the first weeks of life, infants develop an ability to detect intermodal invariants and regularities in their sensorimotor experience, which specify themselves as separate entities agent in the environment. Recent observations on the detection of intermodal invariants regarding self-produced leg movements and auditory feedback of sucking by young infants are reported. These observations demonstrate that, early in development and long before mirror self-recognition, infants develop a perceptual ability to specify themselves. It is tentatively proposed that young infants’ propensity to engage in self-perception and systematic exploration of the perceptual consequences of their own action plays an important role in the intermodal calibration of the body and is probably at the origin of an early sense of self: the ecological self.

Do young children use objects as symbols

Much of young childrens 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 childrens symbolic skills in the absence of such scaffolding. In a study of symbol comprehension, children were tested for their ability to comprehend an adults 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 DeLoaches dual representation model, and a modification of that model is proposed.

Perceived self in infancy

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.

Object Representation Guides Infants' Reaching in the Dark

Infants were presented with two sounding objects of different sizes in light and dark, in which sound cued the objects identity. Reaching behavior was assessed to determine if object size influenced preparation for grasping the object. In both light and dark, infants aligned their hands when contacting the large object compared with the small object, which resulted in a reach with both hands extended for the large object and reach with one hand more extended for the small object. Infants contacted the large object more frequently on the bottom and sides rather than the top, where the sound source was located. Reaching in the dark by 6 1/2-month-olds is not merely directed toward a sound source but rather shows preparation in relation to the objects size. These findings were interpreted as evidence that mental representation of previously seen objects can guide subsequent motor action by 6 1/2-month-old infants.

Differential rooting response by neonates: Evidence for an early sense of self

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 infants 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.

Developmental link between dyadic and triadic social competence in infancy

The social responses of 48 7- and 10-month-old infants were analysed and compared in the context of dyadic and triadic situations. In the dyadic situation, infants’ reactions to a sudden 1 min still face adopted by a social partner in a face-to-face interaction were recorded. In the triadic situation, infants’ monitoring of a social partner in various situations of object exploration was recorded. Results indicated that specie c responses in a dyadic context correlate with responses expressed by the infant in a triadic context. At either age, infants that demonstrated attempts to re-engage the experimenter during the still-face episode in the dyadic situation were also those who manifested the most signs of joint engagement, attention following and attention monitoring in the triadic situation. These e ndings are interpreted as the demonstration of a developmental link between dyadic and triadic social competence in infancy.