The development of body self-awareness

Two experiments examined toddlers' performance on a new task designed to examine the development of body self-awareness. The new task was conceived from observations by Piaget (1953/1977) and theoretical work from Povinelli and Cant (1995) and involved a toy shopping cart to the back of which a small mat had been attached. Children were asked to push the cart to their mothers but in attempting to do so they had to step on the mat and in consequence, their body weight prevented the cart from moving. In the first experiment, performance on the shopping cart task was examined in children of 16 and 21 months both when the self was the obstacle and when a heavy weight was the obstacle. Results showed significant improvement with age in performance for the self-version of the task that was not matched by similar age differences in the weight task. In the second experiment, children's performance on both the self-version of the shopping cart and on a standard mirror self-recognition task was assessed. Results showed a significant correlation independent of age for these 2 tasks. These findings provide further evidence for the notion that toddlers develop an objective awareness of the self during the 2nd year. They are also consistent with the idea that body self-awareness is heightened in situations requiring self-monitoring during movement.