Have you ever wondered if your baby knows who they are? In this blog we will explore the different ways in which babies start to recognise themselves and how you can observe that from home. We’ll also touch on the best ways for you to help your little ones discover themselves as they develop their complex self-representations.
Baby self-recognition through the senses
Have you ever wondered how your little one starts to understand who they are? As adults, our sense of self consists of many different facets that are often much too complicated for young babies to comprehend. This includes our gender, race, interests, and many more attributes that, combined, make us who we are. Our little ones, however, are not yet able to quite piece together all these complicated self-representations. So, for babies, research looks at when and how they begin to recognise their own faces and bodies; a key building block in developing these more complex depictions of the self.
There are many different ways in which we, and our little ones, can recognise ourselves. In particular, we can identify ourselves and our bodies through various senses. This is mainly evident through sight, touch, and sound:
Visual self-recognition
This is possibly the most obvious type of self-recognition that comes to mind for most of us; it is also seemingly the most widely researched. Visual self-recognition is all about being able to identify oneself using our sight, whether this is through mirrors, images, videos, or simply seeing our own bodies in real life! Continue reading this blog for more information on how we can measure this most evident form of self-recognition.
Tactile self-recognition
Touch itself is inherently linked to the self as, in order to feel a touch, it must be administered to our own bodies. Therefore, recognising a touch requires at least some understanding of our own bodies. Specifically, research has looked into babies’ ability to localise touches on their own bodies. This ability starts to develop from birth but often becomes fully realised within the first year of life; by the end of which babies typically orient to the exact location of the touch presented. This shows how we use touch to begin to make our bodily self-representations.
Auditory self-recognition
Can your kids recognise their own voice and, if so, when do we develop this skill? Well, according to the research, there is yet to be any definitive answer to this question. It’s been found that even 5-year-old children could not recognise recordings of their own voices. This may be linked to the concept that our voice sounds different to us on a recording than it does in our head. We’ve all listened back to a voice recording of ourselves and thought, “that doesn’t sound like me!”, it can even make you cringe to listen to. But this is due to the different pathways in which we receive the sound; hearing our voice as we’re speaking requires the sound to travel through the bones in our skull to reach our ears. Whereas, on a recording, our voice travels as all other sounds do, through the air. This causes our own voice to sound different depending on how we hear it. As we usually hear our voice as we speak, and can never hear others’ voices this way, it leads to the question of when we develop auditory self-recognition to be much more complicated!
Does my little one recognise themself?
As interesting as it is to learn all about how babies recognise themselves, you may be reading this wondering how to know if your own children can recognise themselves. The good news is there’s a really simple activity you can do with your baby to test this out! It's called the mirror rouge test and it is the most common test of visual self-recognition. In order to try it with your child, all you need is a sticker/makeup and a mirror.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to run the mirror rouge test:
Familiarisation
Simply sit your little one in front of the mirror to give them time to get used to the environment.
Apply the mark
You now need to make a mark on your baby’s forehead – this can be done using a sticker (ideally a round red one) or some makeup (such as lipstick or blusher). Place this mark in the centre of their forehead. Do you best to not draw attraction to this mark, for example, distracting your little one with toys during the mark placement.
Let them explore!
Sit your child back in front of the mirror and observe how they react.
Study their behaviour
To ascertain whether they pass the test or not, keep an eye on how they react to the mark you applied. Specifically, look out for “mark-directed behaviour”. This can include verbal responses to the mark (e.g., “what did you put on my head”) or tactile responses (e.g., touching the mark/going to wipe it off). If your little one shows these mark-directed behaviours, we can assume they recognise the image in the mirror as themselves and that something is there that shouldn’t be (i.e., the mark). However, if they reach for the mirror or go to look behind it, we can assume they don’t see the image as their own – they may even consider it to be another baby entirely.
Typically, babies will pass this test at around 18-months-old, and this is when we consider visual self-recognition to develop for humans. However, if your little one is not showing this mark-directed behaviour, don’t panic! Although this is the current standard test of self-recognition, there is a lot of criticism of it, which may explain why your baby isn’t passing the test. For example, some researchers have posed that children may not pass this test because babies of this age simply don’t understand mirrors. It is quite a complex concept to grasp that you can exist both within your bodily space and in a mirror positioned opposite you. One way to combat this could be the use of virtual reality, which is a new method of baby research being developed – stay tuned for future blogs about just this!
How to encourage your child’s self-recognition
Throughout this blog we’ve discussed how and when your little ones might start the complicated process of developing a sense of self. However, although there is no way to definitively kick-start their self-identity, there are some activities you can do to foster its development. Here are some suggestions on how best to do this:
Show your little one photos and videos of themselves so they can start to form an image in their minds of what they look like
Use mirror play to give your baby more chances to see their faces and bodies move in real time
Similarly to the above, use video calls to allow your baby to see their own live image in another format
Play labelling games, where you ask them to point to their different body parts or you point and ask for/tell them the name of that body part
Using their name or pronouns when talking to them – e.g., pointing at them and saying “that’s you/*your baby’s name*” or asking “is that your/*your baby’s name*’s leg?”
These are all simple activities that can help to foster self-recognition in your child. As they get older, you can expand these to include the more complex properties of the self. For example, asking them to identify their emotions, letting them choose their favourite activity to do, or having conversations about their racial/gender identity. This will allow your little ones to explore and discover who they are, all the way from recognising their own face to a fully-fledged concept of their own identity.
Take home message…
An adult definition of a sense of self is complex and multifaceted. In order for our children to reach this point, they must first start with the basics: recognising themselves. This can come in many different forms and utilises many different senses. The most obvious form of self-recognition is using your sight to recognise your own face and there is a simple test you can do from home to see if your baby has yet reached this milestone. However, there are many different ways we can foster our little one’s development of the self, starting with basic self-recognition and onwards to the complexities of adult self-identity. And remember, as their caregiver, you are lucky enough to be the ones to watch them grow up and discover who they are!
About the author
Alice is our Marketing Executive and also a developmental psychologist. She is currently studying as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham within the Birmingham BabyLab. Her research involves exploring how babies develop a sense of self-awareness, creating and using a new virtual reality system to do so.
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