PSYC2002 Study Guide - Final Guide: Mirror Test, Personal Pronoun, Autobiographical Memory
The Development of Self-Concept
Self-Awareness
• An understanding (an internal representation) that oneself exists as a physical and cognisant entity as
distinct from others across space and time.
• Mirror self-recognition: Gallup (1970) - Chimpanzees introduced to a mirror.
• Initially showed behaviour that suggested they thought their image was an unfamiliar conspecific.
• After several hours behaviour was self-directed, eg: preening, checking teeth.
• Chimpanzees then given the Rouge test:
o Rouge (or a sticker in infant research) is surreptitiously placed on a participant after a period of
exposure to a minor.
o Participant shown mirror again.
o DV = does participant act in ways that suggest they recognise that their physical appearance
has changed, eg: rub mark?
• Chimpanzees, Orangutans and some Gorilla (only ones that are human reared) pass the rogue test.
Mirror Self Recognition (MSR): Infant Research
• Children first begin to pass the MSR task at 15 months (mean age of onset = 18 months).
• Means that minimally, the child can very early differentiate itself from other environmental objects - it
understands that it exists as an independent entity - and its image is representative of this.
• Research on MSR infants has taken two routes:
1. Which cues provided by the mirror do children use to recognise themselves?
2. What is the cognitive significance of self-recognition.
MSR: What cues are important?
• Contingency - the synchrony between one's actions and the actions of the image in the mirror.
• Lewis & Brooks-Gunn (1979) suggested that children passed self-recognition tasks independent of
feedback (immediate vs. delayed).
• They concluded that from about 2yo children could recognise themselves from feature cues in the
absence of contingency cues.
• If true, it suggests very young children have a representation of self that is independent of space and
time, and that development of MSR is rapid and sophisticated.
• Their evidence was based on equivocal data:
o Children responded to photos less with exclamations like "that's me" and more by labelling the
photos with their proper name.
o Other measures included looking at videos of themselves longer than videos of other children.
Cognitive Significance of MSR
• Self-recognition marks the beginnings of the child's ability to meta-represent.
• That is, it represents an understanding that one thing, i.e. a mirror image, can stand in a
representational relation to something else, i.e. the child.
• This ability arguably underlies the development of many aspects of cognitive development.
Povinelli,
Landau &
Perilloux
(1996)
• Study: Children 3-5yo participated in a distractor task, in the middle of which an experimenter put a
sticker on a child's head.
• Experimenter took Polaroid photo of child; after experiment child shown photo and asked questions
about it.
• Children who didn't react to photo were put in front of a mirror.
• Pass rate for 36mo on photo task was only 13% but rose to 85% on MSR.
• Pass rate for 48mo was 80%.
• When asked who was in the photo, the youngest children tended to give their proper names; older
children answered using personal pronouns.
• When asked 'where is the sticker now?', the youngest answered using 3rd person pronouns such as
him/her.
• Suggests these children (3yo) do not have an understanding of the temporal continuity of the self, but
merely an atemporal 'on-line' self.
• This is consistent with the fact that we have very little autobiographical memory before 3 years.
Nielson et
al. (2006)
• All past research has concentrated on children's ability to recognise their face.
• Therefore passing the MSR test might reflect changes in face recognition, not self-concept.
• The 'leg MSR task'
o Study 1: Infant marked on leg and performed regular face mirror recognition task.
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Document Summary
Self-awareness: an understanding (an internal representation) that oneself exists as a physical and cognisant entity as distinct from others across space and time. Initially showed behaviour that suggested they thought their image was an unfamiliar conspecific: mirror self-recognition: gallup (1970) - chimpanzees introduced to a mirror, after several hours behaviour was self-directed, eg: preening, checking teeth. Chimpanzees, orangutans and some gorilla (only ones that are human reared) pass the rogue test. Contingency - the synchrony between one"s actions and the actions of the image in the mirror. Lewis & brooks-gunn (1979) suggested that children passed self-recognition tasks independent of feedback (immediate vs. delayed). They concluded that from about 2yo children could recognise themselves from feature cues in the absence of contingency cues. If true, it suggests very young children have a representation of self that is independent of space and time, and that development of msr is rapid and sophisticated. Self-recognition marks the beginnings of the child"s ability to meta-represent.
