Why Do Young Children Hide by Closing Their Eyes? Self-Visibility and the Developing Concept of Self

Children's Theories of the Self

“…One series of studies directly investigated the question of whether 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children naturally think of the self as being located in a particular part of the body, using an implicit method that asked children when an object was closest to a person (Starmans & Bloom, ). The logic of this method was that if children consider the self to be equally distributed across the body, or if they think the self has no spatial location, then they should judge that objects are equally close to a person regardless of where on her body they are positioned.…”

“…Research on adults’ implicit judgments about the location of the self has produced mixed results. Studies using the “closer object” method described earlier have found that adults share children's intuitions that the self is located in the head, near the eyes (Starmans & Bloom, ). However, studies using other methods suggest that adults’ intuitions might be more variable.…”

“…In one study, participants were asked which of two characters was “more good,” when both characters performed the same moral action, but one experienced inner conflict and the other did not. While adults judged that the character who had to overcome the conflicting desire to do a bad action deserved more moral credit, 3‐ to 8‐year‐old children overwhelmingly chose the character with no inner conflict as “more good” (Starmans & Bloom, ). This suggests that children may begin with a more Aristotelian view of morality, approving most of those who do not struggle with moral decisions, but sometime between 8 years of age and adulthood develop a more Kantian framework, judging the worth of moral actions based on how difficult the action was for the actor.…”

Machines with Faces: Robot Bodies and the Problem of Cruelty

“…If the child can't see anything, this explanation went, then the child believes that there is nothing there. This explanation was always problematised by babies' love of peek-a-boo, in which they are endlessly surprised and delighted by the disappearance and reappearance of an adult who covers his or her own face, rather than the face of the child, but in any event research has established that this experience of invisibility is caused by the absence of eyes rather than the absence of sight (Russell et al, 2012). Young children understand perfectly well that their bodies remain visible while their eyes are covered, but nonetheless believe that their selves are inaccessible without mutual looking, and the selves of others are inaccessible under the same circumstances.…”

Staatszombies. Sterbekulte, Leviathane und andere Goldene Kälber der jüngeren politischen Ikonologie

“…Dass das Medium, nicht der Absender, die Botschaft "mache" und auch Kunst daher "nicht Fiktion" bleibt, sondern "eine Realität mit dem Recht zu eigener Objektivität" erzeugt, war freilich schon von McLuhan (McLuhan/Fiore 1967) und Luhmann (1998: 353) zu hören. Die Konstitution von Kommunikation zeigt sich schon im Blickverhalten von Kleinkindern, deren kognitionspsychologische Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst-Phase auf der Vorstellung basiert, nur jemand, der einen auch anschaut, sei ‚wirklich' und könne gesehen werden: Wer nicht guckt, ist unsichtbar (Russell et al 2012). Und freilich haben auch allerlei Anverwandlungen von Austins Sprechaktidee längst Eingang in die Bildphilosophie gefunden (vgl.…”