Self-Awareness and Other-Awareness II: Mirror Self-Recognition, Social Contingency Awareness, and Synchronic Imitation

During the second year of life, children's social-cognitive competence shows a dramatic increase. They begin (a) to recognize themselves in mirrors (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979), (b) to react self-consciously when in the center of others' attention (Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, & Weiss, 1989), (c) to react with empathic behavior to victims of distress (Zahn-Waxier, RadkeYarrow, & King, 1979), (d) to communicate with peers preverbally through the synchronic imitation of each other's activity (Nadel-Brulfert & Baudonniere, 1982), and (e) to cooperate with peers (Brownell&Carriger, 1990). We (Asendorpf & Baudonniere, 1993) have attempted to integrate these findings within a social-cognitive framework. The five rapidly developing abilities are instances of two particular kinds of cognition: self-awareness (self-recognition ability) and other-awareness (self-consciousness, empathy, communication through synchronic imitation, and cooperation). We have proposed that these two kinds of cognition develop in close synchrony during the second year because both types of cognition are based on one common cognitive capacity: the capacity for secondary representation.

[1]  A. Meltzoff.  Foundations for developing a concept of self: The role of imitation in relating self to other and the value of social mirroring, social modeling, and self practice in infancy. , 1990 .

[2]  A. Greenwald,et al.  Psychological perspectives on the self , 1982 .

[3]  Infant imitation and memory: nine-month-olds in immediate and deferred tests. , 1988 .

[4]  Michael Lewis,et al.  Social cognition and the acquisition of self , 1979 .

[5]  W. James,et al.  The Principles of Psychology. , 1983 .

[6]  B. Priel,et al.  Self-recognition: a study of a population without mirrors. , 1986, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[7]  Jacqueline Nadel,et al.  Communicating by Imitation: A Developmental and Comparative Approach to Transitory Social Competence , 1989 .

[8]  Heidi Keller,et al.  Infant Development , 2019 .

[9]  H. Ross,et al.  The origins of social games , 1980 .

[10]  J. Asendorpf,et al.  Self-Awareness and Other-Awareness: Mirror Self-Recognition and Synchronic Imitation among Unfamiliar Peers. , 1993 .

[11]  P. Baudonniere,et al.  Development of Communicative Competencies in Early Childhood: A Model and Results , 1989 .

[12]  J. Perner.  Understanding the Representational Mind , 1993 .

[13]  C Stanger,et al.  Self development and self-conscious emotions. , 1989, Child development.

[14]  M. Parten.  Social participation among pre-school children. , 1932 .

[15]  Andrew N Meltzoff,et al.  Peer Imitation by Toddlers in Laboratory, Home, and Day-Care Contexts: Implications for Social Learning and Memory. , 1993, Developmental psychology.

[16]  J. Mandler,et al.  Putting the horse before the cart: The use of temporal order in recall of events by one-year-old children. , 1992 .

[17]  Children's play , 1980 .

[18]  Edward Mueller,et al.  The Origins of Social Skills and Interaction among Playgroup Toddlers. , 1977 .

[19]  Celia A. Brownell,et al.  Changes in cooperation and self-other differentiation during the second year. , 1990, Child development.

[20]  A. Meltzoff.  Immediate and Deferred Imitation in Fourteen- and Twenty-Four-Month-Old Infants. , 1985 .

[21]  W. Griffin,et al.  Analysis of behavioral durations in observational studies of social interaction. , 1989, Psychological bulletin.

[22]  P. Baudonniere,et al.  The Social Function of Reciprocal Imitation in 2-Year-Old Peers , 1982 .

[23]  D. Bischof-Köhler,et al.  Infant Development: Perspectives from German Speaking Countries , 1991 .

[24]  C. Eckerman,et al.  Toddlers' emerging ways of achieving social coordinations with a peer. , 1989, Child development.

[25]  C. Zahn-Waxler,et al.  Child rearing and children's prosocial initiations toward victims of distress. , 1979, Child development.

[26]  D. Cicchetti,et al.  The self in transition: Infancy to childhood. , 1990 .

[27]  Pierre-Marie Baudonnière.  L'évolution des compétences à communiquer chez l'enfant de 2 à 4 ans , 1988 .

[28]  A. Meltzoff.  Infant imitation and memory: nine-month-olds in immediate and deferred tests. , 1988, Child development.

[29]  C. Eckerman,et al.  Toddlers' social coordinations: Changing responses to another's invitation to play. , 1989 .

[30]  R. Emde.  The prerepresentational self and its affective core. , 1983, The Psychoanalytic study of the child.

[31]  D. Bischof-Köhler.  Über den Zusammenhang von Empathie und der Fähigkeit, sich im Spiegel zu erkennen , 1988 .

[32]  A. Leslie.  Pretense and representation: The origins of "theory of mind." , 1987 .

[33]  D. Olson,et al.  Developing theories of mind , 1988 .

[34]  A. Freud,et al.  The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child , 1949 .

[35]  Evolution in mode of social exchange in 2, 3 and 4 year old peers , 1988 .

[36]  B. Amsterdam,et al.  Mirror self-image reactions before age two. , 1972, Developmental psychobiology.