Self-Unity as Ground Zero of Learning and Development

Philippe Rochat

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00414

Abstract

Contrary to the suggestion that we are born in a state of confusion and primordial state of a-dualism with the environment, infancy research of the past 40 years shows that from the outset, infants are objective perceivers guided by rich evolved survival values of approach and avoidance in relation to specific resources in the environment such as faces, food, or smell. This starting-state competence drives and organizes their behavior. Evidence-based ascription of self-unity at birth is discussed. Selected findings are presented suggesting that self-unity is a primordial human experience, the main organizer of behavior from the outset. Self-unity is the necessary ground zero enabling the rapid learning and development taking place early in human life.

Highlights

Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cognition, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
The driving argument here is that learning and development early in life and beyond would rest on a primordial and necessary sense of self-unity
I tried to show that behavioral research over the past 40 years and current studies based on novel physiological and behavioral recording techniques (Maister et al, 2017; Meltzoff et al, 2018) demonstrate that the human neonate has rudiments of an experiential self-awareness that has unity, this unity justifying ascription of an implicit and embodied self-unity at birth, in other words the ascription of a minimal and necessary selfawareness from the outset of development

Summary

Philippe Rochat*

Reviewed by: Daniela Corbetta, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States. Contrary to the suggestion that we are born in a state of confusion and primordial state of a-dualism with the environment, infancy research of the past 40 years shows that from the outset, infants are objective perceivers guided by rich evolved survival values of approach and avoidance in relation to specific resources in the environment such as faces, food, or smell This starting-state competence drives and organizes their behavior. Self-unity as the embodied sense of self as an organized and differentiated entity among other entities is ground zero of learning and development This is true for both empirical and common sense reasons. These findings, among many others (see Rochat, 2001), point to an experiential awareness from the outset that is organized within a stable spatial and temporal organization

BODY SCHEMA AT BIRTH

CONCLUSION