Bases for the Infant’s Developing Self-Awareness

With very few exceptions, no coherent model of representing the self exists for nonhuman species. According to our hypothesis, understanding of the Self as an object' can also be found in a wide range of animals including the dog, a fast-moving terrestrial predator/scavenger, with highly developed senses and complex cognitive capacity. We tested companion dogs in three experiments in which they faced three different variations of the same physical challenge: passing through an opening in a wall. We predicted that if dogs are capable of representing their own body size, they will react differently when faced with adequate or too small openings. We found that dogs started to move towards and approached the too small openings with significantly longer latencies than the suitable ones; and upon reaching it, they did not try to get through the too small openings. In another experiment, the medium-size (still large enough) opening was approached with latencies that fell between the latencies measured in the cases of the very large or the too small openings. Having discussed the potential underlying mechanisms, we concluded that our results convincingly assume that dogs can represent their own body size in novel contexts.

show abstract

“…the mental 'template') is still unclear even in the case of human infants (see, e.g. Filippetti et al 2014;Samuels 1986).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

That dog won’t fit: body size awareness in dogs

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Nevertheless, over the last few years a kind of consensus has developed about the way to resolve this problem. A major investigation of selfawareness in infancy (Lewis & Brooks-Gum, 1979), an essay on the subject (Samuels, 1986) and two major reviews (Damon & Hart, 1982;Harter, 1983) all depend on William James, restoring him to a primary place in this field after many years of neglect. His central ideas are used to organize the empirical data which these various authors present and discuss.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On self‐boundary: A study of the development of the concept of secrecy

Meares

Orlay

1988

British Journal of Medical Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The child's developing concept of a 'boundary' between an inner world of 'self' and an outer world 'non-self' is central to a number of systems of psychodynamic theory. The notion of boundary is also essential to Piaget. Despite the evident importance of the subject, there have been few attempts to discover the age at which this concept emerges. This study of 40 urban Australian children uses the development of the concept of secrecy as a marker. Most children attained this concept during the fifth year of life.

show abstract

“…An alternative is that higher order, more holistic, perceptual evaluations could yield a perceptual judgment of attractiveness. Candidates for what makes a face attractive to an adult might include similarity to a 'baby-face prototype' (Lorenz 1943;Hildebrandt and Fitzgerald 1979), resemblance to mother or to another familiar face (Moreland and Zajonc 1982), similarity to one's own face (Sappenfield and Balogh 1970;Samuels 1986), or similarity to a 'stereotypical' or average face . Some of these factors might also apply to babies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facial Aesthetics: Babies Prefer Attractiveness to Symmetry

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. The visual preferences of human infants for faces that varied in their attractiveness and in their symmetry about the midline were explored. The aim was to establish whether infants' visual preference for attractive faces may be mediated by the vertical symmetry of the face. Chimeric faces, made from photographs of attractive and unattractive female faces, were produced by computer graphics. Babies looked longer at normal and at chimeric attractive faces than at normal and at chimeric unattractive faces. There were no developmental differences between the younger and older infants: all preferred to look at the attractive faces. Infants as young as 4 months showed similarity with adults in the 'aesthetic perception' of attractiveness and this preference was not based on the vertical symmetry of the face.

show abstract

Bases for the Infant’s Developing Self-Awareness

Cited by 14 publications

References 9 publications

That dog won’t fit: body size awareness in dogs

That dog won’t fit: body size awareness in dogs

On self‐boundary: A study of the development of the concept of secrecy

Facial Aesthetics: Babies Prefer Attractiveness to Symmetry

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About