Self‐references among children's first fifty words: Indications for an emerging sense of self in Dutch‐speaking children

Abstract

AbstractThe present study investigated at what age self‐references would turn up for the first time in young children's language and what kind of words these were. This was studied for a corpus of the first 50 words, produced by ten children, five boys and five girls, collected through parental reports. Self‐references were defined as all words that referred in one way or another to the speakers themselves. They were not restricted to utterances containing pronominals of the first person singular or the child's first name. The appearance of self‐references varied with the onset of speech. Children who started to speak early also produced self‐referent words at an early age (between 12 and 16 months). Self‐references could be satisfactorily classified into three lexical categories: nominals, action words and modifiers, containing words (a) labelling body parts, (b) verbalizing action plans and ongoing actions, and (c) expressing characteristics of outer appearance and actions, and physical sensations, respectively. This indicates that young children's sense of self is not restricted to an awareness of their own actions, but that a variety of experiences contribute to this. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.