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Social & Emotional Development
Developing Self-Awareness
WiseTip: SE-AWA-M0009-G01B

Provide safe opportunities for baby to look at reflective surfaces such as mirrors. Let your baby pause to look at and play with the reflection. Make sure that the mirror is unbreakable or safely and securely anchored.

1, 2

  1. New Jersey Council for Young Children. (2013). New Jersey Birth to Three Early Learning Standards. Retrieved from: https://www.nj.gov/education/ece/guide/standards/birth/standards.pdf

  2. Rochat, P. (2001). Origins of self-concept. In G. Bremner & A. Fogel (Eds.), Handbooks of developmental psychology. Blackwell handbook of infant development (pp. 191-212). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

0-9 months
Caregiving
WHY IT MATTERS

Young infants’ social expectations and

sense of self-efficacy

Sense of Self-Efficacy - Children who acquire effective self-regulatory skills develop a sense of academic self-efficacy – confidence in their own ability, which supports future self-regulation.1 When emotional self-regulation has developed well, young people acquire a sense of emotional self-efficacy – a feeling of being in control of their emotional experience.2, 3 When children have consistent support in the early years to cope with challenges, it has a powerful and enduring influence in the adolescent years.

1. Zimmerman, B. J., & Moylan, A. R. (2009). Self-regulation: Where metacognition and motivation intersect. In D. J. Hacker, J. Dunlosky, & A. C. Graesser (Eds.), Handbook of metacognition in education (pp. 299-315). New York: Routledge.

2. Saarni, C. (2000). Emotional competence: A developmental perspective. In R. Bar-On & J. D. A. Parker (Eds.), Handbook of emotional intelligence (pp. 68-91). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

3. Thompson, R. A. & Goodman, M. (2010). Development of emotion regulation: More than meets the eye. In A. M. Kring & D. M. Sloan (Eds.), Emotion regulation and psychopathology: A transdiagnostic approach to etiology and treatment (pp. 38-58). New York: Guilford.

are formed during their interactions with their caregivers.
1
  1. McQuaid, N. E., Bibok, M. B., & Carpendale, J. I. M. (2009). Relation between maternal contingent responsiveness and infant social expectations. Infancy, 14(3), 390-401.

Adult caregivers’ responses to babies play a crucial role in how they perceive themselves. Responsive care that considers the baby's needs and interests creates a positive sense of self. When babies have nurturing and warm relationships with regular caregivers, they develop a more positive sense of self.

2
  1. Lally, J. R., & Mangione, P. (2006). The uniqueness of infancy demands a responsive approach to care. Young Children, 61(4), 14–20.
A positive sense of self ensures that babies will relate to people in a more socially secure manner.
3
  1. McMullen, M. B., & Dixon, S. (2009). In support of a relationship-based approach to practice with infants and toddlers in the United States. In Brownlee, J. (Ed.). Participatory learning and the early years (pp. 109-128). London: Routledge.

Calling your baby's name helps your baby develop self-awareness as a being who is separate from the people in the environment. Research on one to two-month-old babies showed that infants begin to manifest a clear sense of their agency in the world at around two months of age. Babies could start to control how strongly they sucked at a bottle to get what they wanted instead of allowing external factors to influence the process.

This stage is known as the

intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity - Intersubjectivity, the process whereby two participants who begin a task with different understandings arrive at a shared understanding.4 Intersubjectivity promotes a common ground for communication, where one adjusts to the other person’s perspective. The capacity for intersubjectivity is present in parent-infant mutual gaze, exchange of vocal and emotional signals, imitation, and joint play with objects, and in toddlers’ capacity to infer others’ intentions.5, 6

4. Newson, J., & Newson, E. (1975). Intersubjectivity and the transmission of culture: On the social origins of symbolic functioning. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 24, 437-446.

5. Csibra, G. (2010). Recognizing Communicative Intentions in Infancy. Mind & Language, 25(2), 141-168. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0017.2009.01384.x

6. Feldman, R. (2007). Parent-infant synchrony and the construction of shared timing; physiological precursors, developmental outcomes, and risk conditions. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 48(3-4), 329-354. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2006.01701.x

stage, where babies begin to understand that they are separate persons from people in the environment. With that awareness, babies will initiate interactions and respond to others. Calling babies by their names helps build self-awareness and facilitates babies’ initiating and responding when interacting with others.
4, 5

  1. Rochat, P., & Striano, T. (1999). Social cognitive development in the first year. In P. Rochat (Ed.) Early Social Cognition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 3-34.

  2. Rochat, P. (2001). Origins of self-concept. In G. Bremner & A. Fogel (Eds.), Handbooks of developmental psychology. Blackwell handbook of infant development (pp. 191-212). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Through carrying out a series of empirical studies using mirrors and videos, developmental psychologist Rochat suggested that children develop through a series of levels of self-awareness between birth and approximately age 4 or 5. Self-awareness is observed by how children respond to their reflection in a mirror.

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