Fiona brought Finn, her 6-month-old boy, to work yesterday, and talked about his developmental stages. I mentioned to her that I now have TWO psychologist friends with babies, and that both of you like to talk in terms of developmental psychology. :)
She has a theory about self-recognition - apparently all the experiments on self-recognition involve grabbing tasks, so babies can't demonstrate self-recognition until they have the motor control to complete the tasks. But Fiona says that from a very early age (was it 4 weeks? I can't remember) Finn would always beam at himself when he saw himself in the mirror. He was clearly focusing on himself rather than the adults, and he showed no interest in other babies, but he would smile every time he saw himself.
Fiona thinks this is good circumstantial evidence of very early self-recognition, even if it isn't as conclusive as the grabbing task. She asked me to ask you, did you notice anything similar with Bridie?
Bridie always looks at the mirror with fascination - I don't think she knows it's her, but she knows it's something unusual! The self-recognition tasks I know of involve marking the baby's cheek with rouge or putting a sticker in their hair in such a way that they don't notice, then putting them in front of the mirror. I would have thought that just flailing in the direction of the mark/sticker would be a pretty clear indication - though even just flailing in a particularly direction is something that I don't remember her doing before 8-12 weeks. (Before that it was just 'ooh, something interesting - activate FLAIL program'!)
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She has a theory about self-recognition - apparently all the experiments on self-recognition involve grabbing tasks, so babies can't demonstrate self-recognition until they have the motor control to complete the tasks. But Fiona says that from a very early age (was it 4 weeks? I can't remember) Finn would always beam at himself when he saw himself in the mirror. He was clearly focusing on himself rather than the adults, and he showed no interest in other babies, but he would smile every time he saw himself.
Fiona thinks this is good circumstantial evidence of very early self-recognition, even if it isn't as conclusive as the grabbing task. She asked me to ask you, did you notice anything similar with Bridie?
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The self-recognition tasks I know of involve marking the baby's cheek with rouge or putting a sticker in their hair in such a way that they don't notice, then putting them in front of the mirror. I would have thought that just flailing in the direction of the mark/sticker would be a pretty clear indication - though even just flailing in a particularly direction is something that I don't remember her doing before 8-12 weeks. (Before that it was just 'ooh, something interesting - activate FLAIL program'!)
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