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Category: Child Psychology
The Mirror Test For Babies Reveals When The Self Emerges
To this day the ‘mirror test’ or ‘rouge test’ remains the best experiment yet developed for examining the emergence of self-concept in infants.
To this day the ‘mirror test’ or ‘rouge test’ remains the best experiment yet developed for examining the emergence of self-concept in infants.
Most people look out for number one, themselves, which makes it strange to think that there was ever a time when we had no concept of ‘me’.
A simple study dating from the early 70s suggests that before the age of around two years old we can’t recognise ourselves in the mirror.
Because of this study, and the many variations that have followed, some claim that it isn’t until our second birthday that our self-concept emerges.
Rouge test
In 1972 Beulah Amsterdam from the University of North Carolina published a study that has kicked-off decades of research on self-recognition (Amsterdam, 1972).
The study’s procedure was simple.
Infants between the ages of 6 and 24 months were placed in front of a mirror after a spot of rouge had been surreptitiously put on their noses.
Then their mothers pointed to the reflection in the mirror and asked the child: “Who’s that?”.
Researchers than watched infants’ behaviour.
After testing 88 infants Amsterdam could only obtain reliable data on 16 of them – infants will be infants and many didn’t want to play.
From these 16 infants Amsterdam found three categories of response:
- 6-12 months: it’s another baby! The child behaves as though the infant in the mirror is someone else – someone they’d like to be friendly with. They display approach behaviours such as smiling and making noises.
- 13-24 months: withdrawal. The infants no longer seem particularly happy at catching their own image in the mirror. Some look a little wary while others will smile occasionally and make some noises. One interpretation of this behaviour is that the infants are acting self-consciously here (perhaps demonstrating self-concept), but it could also be a reaction to another child.
- 20-24 months onwards: it’s me! From around this age infants start to clearly recognise themselves by pointing to the spot of rouge on their own noses. This strongly suggest they have realised the image is themselves and the spot of rouge is on their own nose.
Although Amsterdam’s results were from a small sample size, they have subsequently been repeated with many more participants.
Also, later studies with control conditions have found infants in this age-range don’t touch their nose if it isn’t marked with rouge.
This showed that touching the nose isn’t somehow a natural reaction for infants to seeing own reflection.
Self-concept or just self-recognition?
Of course this study simplifies a mass of psychological complexity.
Psychologists have raised all sorts of questions about what the mirror test or rouge test reveals.
It could be, for example, that infants just don’t understand faces particularly well until they are around two years old.
Perhaps, then, they develop a self-concept at a much earlier stage.
Alternatively it could be that at around two years old infants develop a solid physical or visual self-concept, but still have little mental self-concept.
In this case all the test is showing is that we know what we look like; perhaps we don’t develop our self-concept until much later in life.
These are just two common explanations, I’m sure you can think of more alternatives.
This multitude of possibilities illustrates one of the major hurdles in child psychology: results are especially ambiguous because only limited tests can be carried out on children.
Still, despite these alternatives, the mirror test has proved remarkably hardy over the years and is still used today while other tests have fallen by the wayside.
The social child
One of the reasons for its resilience is that it seems likely that self-concept might well emerge at this age from all the other things we know about children.
It is from around 2 to 4 years of age that children start to display a rapid increase in their social behaviour.
Being able to distinguish yourself from other people is fundamental to successful social relationships rather than simple interactions.
It seems unlikely that infants would be able to build relationships with others without some limited concept of themselves.
The mirror test has also been used on other animals to test their self-concept, indeed the test was originally carried out on chimpanzees by Professor Gordon Gallup a few years before Amsterdam.
All the great apes ‘pass’ the test, along with dolphins, whales and elephants. In one recent study an 8ft mirror was placed in the elephant enclosure at New York’s Bronx Zoo and the elephants had marks painted on their heads.
Researchers who kept watch on the elephants’ reactions saw them touch the paint marks on their own heads.
It’s no coincidence that elephants, like the other animals that pass the test, have complex social systems.
Basic self-recognition is key to being able to relate to others; with this knowledge infants take their first faltering steps into the social world.
→ This article is part of a series on 10 crucial developmental psychology studies:
- When infant memory develops
- How self-concept emerges in infants
- How children learn new concepts
- The importance of attachment styles
- When infants learn to imitate others
- Theory of mind reveals the social world
- Understanding object permanence
- How infants learn their first word
- The six types of play
- Piaget’s stages of development theory
How Family Problems In Childhood Affect Brain Development
Early life stress has this worrying effect on the brain.
Early life stress has this worrying effect on the brain.
Stress in childhood can put you at greater risk of depression later on, research finds.
Early life stress can affect how DNA is expressed and make an organism more susceptible to stress in adult life.
The conclusions come from an epigenetic study of mice.
The study looked at the effect of molecules that regulate our DNA.
Researchers found that mice exposed to stress early in life were more likely to show signs of depression when stressed as adults.
These changes were also linked to genetic differences.
Dr Catherine Peña, who led the study, said:
“Our work identifies a molecular basis for stress during a sensitive developmental window that programs a mouse’s response to stress in adulthood.
We discovered that disrupting maternal care of mice produces changes in levels of hundreds of genes in the VTA that primes this brain region to be in a depression-like state, even before we detect behavioral changes.
Essentially, this brain region encodes a lifelong, latent susceptibility to depression that is revealed only after encountering additional stress.”
The critical transcription factor is called orthodenticle homeobox 2 (Otx2).
A transcription factor helps to control the way our genes are expressed in our body.
This transcription factor did not just influence the mice in infancy, Dr Peña said:
“We anticipated that we would only be able to ameliorate or mimic the effects of early life stress by changing Otx2 levels during the early sensitive period.
This was true for long-lasting effects on depression-like behavior, but somewhat to our surprise we could also change stress sensitivity for short amounts of time by manipulating Otx2 in adulthood.”
Professor Eric J. Nestler, who led the study, explained the ultimate aim of the research:
“This mouse paradigm will be useful for understanding the molecular correlates of increased risk of depression resulting from early life stress and could pave the way to look for such sensitive windows in human studies.
The ultimate translational goal of this research is to aid treatment discoveries relevant to individuals who experienced childhood stress and trauma.”
The study was published in the journal Science (Peña et al., 2017).
This Common Parenting Mistake Could Raise Children Prone To Lying (M)
Grown-ups may have to think twice about what they say to children.
This Parenting Method Is Linked To Higher IQ
This parenting strategy leads to children with IQs 6 points higher.
This parenting strategy leads to children with IQs 6 points higher.
Children raised by nurturing parents develop higher IQs, research finds.
Many of the children in the study, who were raised in Brazil and South Africa, had faced considerable adversity, such as poverty and low birth weight.
But when they experienced responsive caregiving and the opportunity to learn, it was possible for them to reach their full potential.
Responsive caregiving involves being sensitive to the needs of the child and knowing how to respond to them.
Typical nurturing activities include reading to the child, playing games with letters and numbers as well as singing songs together.
Professor Maureen Black, study co-author, said:
“We found that adolescents who were raised in nurturing environments had IQ scores that were on average 6 points higher than those who were not.
This is a striking difference that has profound implications by increasing the intelligence of entire communities.
A nurturing environment also led to better growth and fewer psycho-social difficulties in adolescence, but it did not mitigate the effects of early adversities on growth and psycho-social difficulties.”
The research included over 1,600 children who were tracked from birth to their teenage years.
Both prenatal and early life adversity tends to lower IQ and is linked to problems adjusting psychologically.
However, a nurturing environment created by caregivers counteracts the disadvantages of early adversity.
Professor Black said:
“I think our findings could apply to communities here in the U.S. where children are hungry, living in poverty or lacking in access to medical care.”
Getting involved with children is the key, said Professor Black:
“Get children involved in friendly activities as much as possible rather than parking them in front of a screen.
Children love to learn and in a nurturing environment they can grow into adolescents and adults with the abilities to care for themselves, their families, and their communities.”
The study was published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health (Trude et al., 2020).
A Fascinating Sign That You Have A High IQ
This parental behaviour is linked to more intelligent children.
This parental behaviour is linked to more intelligent children.
Children whose parents are ‘chatterboxes’ tend to have higher IQs, research finds.
Children hearing more speech from their caregivers had better reasoning and numeracy skills, the observational study found.
Some children in the study heard twice as many words as others.
Perhaps less surprisingly, children who heard higher quality speech from their parents, using a more diverse vocabulary, knew more words themselves.
For the study, tiny audio recorders were fitted to 107 children aged between 2 and 4.
They were recorded for 16 hours a day for three days at home.
Ms Katrina d’Apice, the study’s first author, explained the results:
“Using the audio recorders allowed us to study real-life interactions between young children and their families in an unobtrusive way within the home environment rather than a lab setting.
We found that the quantity of adult spoken words that children hear is positively associated with their cognitive ability.
However, further research is needed to explore the reasons behind this link — it could be that greater exposure to language provides more learning opportunities for children, but it could also be the case that more intelligent children evoke more words from adults in their environment.”
While parental talk was linked to children’s cognitive abilities, their parenting strategy was linked to their behaviour.
Specifically, positive parenting was linked to less aggression, disobedience and restlessness.
Positive parenting involves responding to children in positive ways and encouraging them to explore the world.
Professor Sophie von Stumm, study co-author, said:
“This study is the largest naturalistic observation of early life home environments to date.
We found that the quantity of adult spoken words that children were exposed to varied greatly within families.
Some kids heard twice as many words on one day as they did on the next.
The study highlights the importance of treating early life experiences as dynamic and changeable rather than static entities — approaching research in this way will help us to understand the interplay between environmental experiences and children’s differences in development.”
The study was published in the journal Developmental Psychology (d’Apice et al., 2019).
How Parents ‘Pass On’ Empathic Ability To Their Children & Grandchildren (M)
Learn the science-backed methods for nurturing empathy in your children.
This Is How Long Childhood Bullying Echoes Through Adulthood (M)
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4 Ways Parents Can Boost Children’s IQ
The right methods can help boost children’s IQ.
The right methods can help boost children’s IQ.
Parents can boost their children’s IQ, psychological research finds, as long as they use tried and tested methods.
After examining almost every available intervention, Dr John Protzko and colleagues found that just four had a real chance of working:
- Omega-3 supplementation,
- reading to children interactively,
- enrolling children in early educational interventions,
- and sending children to a quality preschool.
The results come from a meta-analysis, a type of study that collects together the results of many other studies.
In doing so, the researchers created a “Database of Raising Intelligence”.
Dr John Protzko, the study’s first author, explained:
“Our aim in creating this database is to learn what works and what doesn’t work to raise people’s intelligence.
For too long, findings have been disconnected and scattered throughout a wide variety of journals.
The broad consensus about what works is founded on only two or three very high-profile studies.”
Supplementation with long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, like those in foods rich in omega-3, was linked to an IQ boost of 3.5 points, on average.
Preschools were linked to an increase of 7 IQ points.
They may boost IQ by providing the child with a cognitively stimulating environment.
In addition, it could be the extra exposure to language that provides the boost.
Dr Protzko said:
“Our current findings strengthen earlier conclusions that complex environments build intelligence, but do cast doubt on others, including evidence that earlier interventions are always most effective.
Overall, identifying the link between essential fatty acids and intelligence gives rise to tantalizing new questions for future research and we look forward to exploring this finding.”
Teaching parents how to read interactively with their children was linked to a 6 point IQ increase.
This is likely from the boost to language development.
The study was published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science (Protzko et al., 2013).
Why People Who Are Bullied Develop Relationship Problems (M)
How bullying in adolescence plants seeds of suspicion that lead to mental health struggles later in life.
