Constructing Infants Evidence Of Self-Recognition

In both articles, infants’ gazes are crucial to the experiments conducted. Whether reacting to disappearing objects in Baillargeon's article or identifying with someone of the same skin color as said in Spelke and Kinzler’s article.

The physical development of a baby in its first six months of life shows limited range of movement but the beginnings of an ability to respond to stimulus around them. They show their reaction to people, sounds and movement by turning their head toward whatever attracts their attention. They will watch an adult’s face whilst feeding, but have already begun to shows signs of recognition as they will smile when familiar people are around them either because they can see them

In Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s talk, she discusses infants and the presence of alloparents in combination with their parents. Hrdy states that human infants fall behind other apes in physical development, but are able to monitor others and assess their intentions from a very young age. I find this interesting because often human infants are only compared to other human infants in regards to if they can hold eye contact and if they understand facial expression. When human infants are compared to other nonhuman infant primates, there is a vast difference of what human infants can be successful at. It is also interesting to note that human infants get significantly better at recognizing their mother’s face as they get older, where chimpanzees get worse at recognizing their mothers face as they get older.

Researchers have sneakily dabbed rouge on young children 's noses in order to study the developmental beginnings of:

Our Life-span Development class observed a child in class for his social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development on October 2nd, 2017. The child observed for this report was almost seven months old at the time of the observation. His name is Maddox and he seems to be a very happy baby and developing at a normal rate. He was observed in classroom 1143 on Dordt College’s campus. His mother gave consent for this observation and both his mother and grandmother were present for the observation and answered questions about his behavior and development outside of what was observed in the classroom.

At 6 weeks infants develop a social smile, at 3 month laughter and curiosity develop, at 4 months full responsive smiles emerge, from 4-8 months they develop anger, from 9014 months they develop a fear of social events, at 12 months the are fearful of unexpected sights and sounds, and at 18 months they are self-aware, feel pride, shame, and embarrassment. In the first two years, infants develop from reactive pain and pleasure to complex patterns of social awareness. Emotions in infants are produced from their body as opposed to their thoughts. Therefore fast and uncensored reactions are common in infants. During their toddler years, the strength of their emotions will increase.

In addition, during my observation, Sydney was able to demonstrate the following gross motor skills. Sydney was placed in a sitting position on the table as well on the floor and was able to sit up unassisted for brief periods of time. Although Sydney appeared to be unstable at times, her mother closely spotted her to ensure her safety. Most babies are able to sit up by themselves unassisted for short periods of time (Oswalt, n.d.). By being able to sit upright and support the weight of her head in the proper position, shows Sydney has developed her core body strength and has met this developmental milestone. In addition, while lying on a blanket on her stomach, Sydney was able to lift her chest and head. According to American Pregnancy Association, most infants at 6 months old can lift their chest and part of their stomach while lying face down (First,

Observing a child is a fascinating and eye opening experience. It is amazing to see how children view certain things differently than adults. Things that some adults take for granted, children see as a miracle. I recently observed a little girl. For the purposes of confidentiality, the name of the little girl has been changed to Katy. She is five years old and has two older sisters. She will start kindergarten this year. I observed Katy on June 20, 2016 at twelve in the afternoon at the park with her mother present. It was nearly 100 degrees outside. There were a couple other children at the park as well.

In this experiment children between the ages of six and twenty-four months, are placed in front of a mirror with a red dot on their face. The reason a red dot was placed on their face was to see whether the child could recognize themselves in the mirror. Children that were younger than fifteen months never touched the red dot, but children from the ages of eighteen to twenty-four months did touch the dot on their face (Papalia & Martorell, 2015). The reason these children were able to touch the dot on their face is because they were self-aware. After further experiments, psychologist found that children by the ages of twenty to twenty-four months were able to use self pronouns and children by the age of nineteen to thirty months were able to describe themselves in descriptive terms (Papalia & Martorell, 2015). From the Rogue Test it is shown that self-awareness is formed between fifteen and eighteen months and self-awareness is is shown through the acknowledgment of self-understanding or the knowing an object is your’s or someone else’s (Papalia & Martorell,

Obiel Macedo, a one year and seven month old infant accomplished many tasks on the developmental checklist. I went to his house, his mother and baby sister were present while I was with him. We sat down and I handed the infant a small container filled with different size blocks. Immediately he grabbed the container, poured out the blocks and began to build a tower quickly. Once he was done creating the tower of blocks, a few seconds later he knocked it down vigorously and started all over again. Then, I handed him a red crayon and a blank sheet of paper, but instead of writing on the paper he went up to the wall and scribbles spontaneously.

Gazing plays a central role in the social and cognitive development of a child. It is documented that from the age of 3 months, a child will begin to develop perceptual learning. An example of this hypothesis was tested with an actor holding a stuffed kitten in front a 1 year old. The 1 year old stared at the kitten longer, therefore the infant’s desire for what the actor was holding caused the infant to interpret the actor’s behavior as

For this assessment I chose to observe my six- month old daughter, Abigail, interacting with her mother, Melissa. Abigail is our third child and Melissa is comfortable with her role as mother. Abigail was born full term and is a healthy baby. All developmental milestones have been reached up until this point. She is a happy baby.

A child’s sense of self as separate from the world is formulated early in development. Children exposed to early trauma, especially by a primary care giver, develop a distorted sense of the self, others, and the world. When exposed to trauma, children become overwhelmed and are unable to effectively self-regulate thus leading to a disjointed sense of self. They have a tendency to lose hope and expect that life will be dangerous thus challenging their ability to survive (Terr, 1992). Survival becomes the predominant drive for children exposed to trauma and their focus becomes toward responding and adapting to a potentially threatening environment. Feelings of trust and the sense of self become compromised as resources are allocated toward coping with threats. Traumatized children experience guilt and low self-esteem and perceive themselves as unlovable and unworthy of protection or love (Johnson, 1985, 1987).

This stage lasts from birth to twelve months. In this stage, infants gain knowledge about their surrounding by using their senses. (Clarke-Stewart, Gruber, & Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 154). They recognize the faces of their caregivers and may respond to smiles. At these stage infants are generally attracted to bright colors, and show response to sound by turning towards the direction of the sound. Studies have indicated that infants between the ages of three and seven weeks have the ability to recognize shapes and pictures of human faces (Goswami, 1994, p. 376).

Around 18 months children are aware that they are separate from others in the world. (Self-recognition). If a red spot is placed on an infant 's nose, infants are able to recognize when looking in the mirror that the dot is on their nose and would touch the dot on themselves, not the mirror.