Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate if children’s early responsiveness toward social partners is developmentally related to their growing concept of self, as reflected in their mirror self-recognition (MSR) and delayed self-recognition (DSR). Thus, a longitudinal study assessed infants’ responsiveness (e.g., smiling, gaze) toward social partners during the still-face (SF) task and a social imitation game and related it to their emerging MSR and DSR. Thereby, children were tested at regular time points from 9 months to 4 years of age. Results revealed significant predictive relations between children’s responsiveness toward a social partner in the SF task at 9 months and their MSR at 24 months. Further, interindividual differences in children’s awareness of and responsiveness toward being imitated in a social imitation game at 12 months proved to be the strongest predictor of children’s DSR at 4 years, while some additional variance was explained by MSR at 24 months and verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest a developmental link between children’s early awareness of and responsiveness toward the social world and their later ability to form a concept of self.
Highlights
Self Development: The Importance of Longitudinal Data The ability to represent oneself as an intentional agent is foundational for the development of social cognition. Meltzoff (1990) has argued that, from birth, infants are able to recognize others as “like me.” Based on this fundamental human ability to establish correspondence between oneself and another agent, infants’ increasing ability to represent themselves as intentional agents leads to an understanding of others’ intentional action
While a representation of the self as an intentional agent remains implicit in social interactions throughout the first and second years of life, first evidence for an explicit self-representation emerges close to the second birthday, when children recognize themselves in the mirror and begin to use self-referential language
In the present longitudinal study of self-development, we investigate the developmental relation of two markers of self-representation, indexing different levels of self-awareness: The mirror self-recognition (MSR) task at 24 months and the delayed self-recognition (DSR) task at 4 years of age
Summary
Self Development: The Importance of Longitudinal Data The ability to represent oneself as an intentional agent is foundational for the development of social cognition. Meltzoff (1990) has argued that, from birth, infants are able to recognize others as “like me.” Based on this fundamental human ability to establish correspondence between oneself and another agent, infants’ increasing ability to represent themselves as intentional agents leads to an understanding of others’ intentional action. Meltzoff (1990) has argued that, from birth, infants are able to recognize others as “like me.” Based on this fundamental human ability to establish correspondence between oneself and another agent, infants’ increasing ability to represent themselves as intentional agents leads to an understanding of others’ intentional action. Theories of the developing self (e.g., Damon and Hart, 1982; Meltzoff, 1990; Rochat, 2003) have emphasized the importance of experience in reciprocal social interaction during the first and second years of life in leading up to the developmental milestone of mirror self-recognition (MSR).
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