PsycheGraduate: Let me see if I am understanding you correctly. From the abstract:
"The newborn shows several signs of consciousness, such as being awake and aware of him/herself and mother. The infant processes olfactory and painful inputs in the cortex, where consciousness is believed to be localized. Furthermore, the newborn expresses primary emotions such as joy, disgust, and surprise and remember rhymes and vowels to which he or she has been exposed during fetal life. Thus, the newborn infant fulfills the criteria of displaying a basic level of consciousness, being aware of its body and him/her-self and somewhat about the external world. Preterm infants may be conscious to a limited degree from about 25 weeks, when the thalamocortical connections are established."
So, the article's premise is that consciousness is a biological process mediated by certain connections in the brain. Or, at least that these are a necessary component of that process. I'm arguing that it is probably more like the end of the first year for true self-awareness because frontal cortices that mediate episodic memory are also needed; but that is just a question of where you draw the line at bare minimum components.
What components do you believe are needed for self-awareness or that which extends beyond the skills of most vertibrates?
I'm not sure we are still talking about what consciousness is? If you are posing this level of basic neural processes is consciouness, then most animals have it. If it means more of self-awareness, then this is not functioning at birth though several of the components need are on-line.
Recent research has demonstrated that many vertebrates are more intelligent and self aware than previously believed which is also of interest.
In terms of self awareness newborns certainly show such capacity but agreed in a more limited manner than after the first year, however, even in this regard babies show some awareness prior to one years of age. Now, if you hold specific definitions of self aware and consciousness I can respect that you draw the line differently from where I do and where much research has been directing us as of late.
One could argue that people around the age of 18 and under 21 do not have fully developed prefrontal cortex connections yet and lack many experiences to put life in context, so they do not have a full consciousness.
Really the mirror test, the social smile and a sense of embarrassment do develop too but these develop at around 2 years of age and older.
Defining consciousness is not such an easy matter and self awareness as I see it in the literature
begins at birth but certainly does not end there.
Self awarness continues to broaden and deepn as one ages, the brains develop connections and experienced is gained.
What I was pointing out was a basic consciousness which the newborn baby exhibits. We would not expect most 10 year olds to be able to calculus and neither would we expect a newborn to walk, drive a car talk and talk on the phone
🙂
Infants do have some episodic memory, however, and this is clearly demonstrated and between the ages of 9 and 12 months typically cause and effect are quite well understood.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Narrative/Wheeler-97.pdf
Here is a more detailed and gradual, progressive take on self awareness in young children:
www.psychology.emory.edu/cognition/rochat/Five%20levels%20.pdf
And here is a basic coverage that holds true:
http://www.madeformums.com/baby-development/your-babys-self-awareness/769.html
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/pain/...rns.aspx?articleID=7167&categoryID=PN-nh3-04d
I do agree, however, that after the first year there is a far greater capacity for self awareness and knowledge of cause and effect along with episodic memory.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Discourse/Narrative/Wheeler-97.pdf
In my own obervations and studies I have seen some remarkable variance among newborns and 1-4 year olds. Piaget made astonishing observations of babies sucking on a nipple for milk and other early stage development of intelligence, albeit his books had me snoring to sleep quite often... they were good reading material.
Further we used to believe that long term memory did not engage until the age of 1 or so but here we see differently:
The influence of training views on infants' long-term memory for simple 3D shapes.
Kraebel KS,
West RN,
Gerhardstein P.
State University of New York, Cortland, USA.
Abstract
This investigation explored infants' ability to retrieve a memory for a simple 3D shape from a novel view following a 24-hr delay. Tests of memory for shape in infancy have typically used extremely short delay intervals between familiarization and test in examining the ability to equate between substantially different views of a 3D object. The current study used longer delays to assess the content of a long-term memory representation. Infants 3-4 months of age learned to kick to move a mobile displaying a simple 3D shape (brick or cylinder). Results of three experiments show that infants can recognize 3D shapes in a novel viewpoint across a 24-hr delay, provided that experience with a sufficiently wide range of views is available during training. The results suggest a capacity for the perception of 3D shape that enables access, across long delays, to a memory representation of sufficient detail that discrimination between two simple shapes (i.e., a cylinder and a brick) is possible. The results suggest that this representation is of a sufficiently abstract nature that perception of the 3D form of the object, independent of the changes in specific features accompanying changes in viewpoint, is also possible. This finding suggests that infants, like adults, possess a functional memory system for the distal shape of simple 3D objects, and can transfer training to a novel view using long-term memory, but that this ability is not as strong as in the mature system. These results have implications for the development of shape perception and for theories of object recognition in general
Abstract
Infants' preferences for a novel or familiar nursery rhyme were examined as an index of long-term memory. One- to 2-month-old infants' preferences were tested, using a nonnutritive sucking, discrimination-learning procedure, at 1, 2, or 3 days after the last of multiple familiarization sessions. A consistent novelty preference was observed at the 1-day retention interval, no consistent preference occurred at the 2-day interval, and a familiarity preference was found following the 3-day interval. This pattern of results is consistent with attentional preference models which interpret novelty and familiarity preferences as reflecting the discrepancy between an external stimulus and the infant's representation of the stimulus. The findings also reveal that infants as young as 1 month of age encoded and subsequently recognized a repeatedly experienced nursery rhyme after a 3-day retention interval. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...199612)29:8<685::AID-DEV4>3.0.CO;2-P/abstract
How the memory of adults evolves from the memory abilities of infants is a central problem in cognitive development. The popular solution holds that the multiple memory systems of adults mature at different rates during infancy. The
early-maturing system (implicit or nondeclarative memory) functions automatically from birth, whereas the
late-maturing system (explicit or declarative memory) functions intentionally, with awareness, from late in the first year. Data are presented from research on deferred imitation, sensory preconditioning, potentiation, and context for which this solution cannot account and present an alternative model that eschews the need for multiple memory systems. The ecological model of infant memory development (
N. E. Spear, 1984) holds that members of all species are perfectly adapted to their niche at each point in ontogeny and exhibit effective, evolutionarily selected solutions to whatever challenges each new niche poses. Because adults and infants occupy different niches, what they perceive, learn, and remember about the same event differs, but their raw capacity to learn and remember does not
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2693033/
Accounting for change in declarative memory: A cognitive neuroscience perspective.
Richmond J,
Nelson CA.
Harvard Medical School And Developmental Medicine Center Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Children's Hospital Boston.
Abstract
The medial temporal lobe memory system matures relatively early and supports rudimentary declarative memory in young infants. There is considerable development, however, in the memory processes that underlie declarative memory performance during infancy. Here we consider age-related changes in encoding, retention, and retrieval in the context of current knowledge about the brain systems that may underlie these memory processes. While changes in infants' encoding may be attributed to rapid myelination during the first year of life, improvements in long-term retention and flexible retrieval are likely due to the prolonged development of the dentate gyrus. Future studies combining measures of brain and behavior are critical in improving our understanding of how brain development drives memory development during infancy and early childhood
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18769510
In many ways the jury has still been out for quite sometime and recent data is reinforcing some previous hand waving and speculation regarding pre-natal and perinatal consciousness. I included other references to be fair and balanced regarding the ongoing scholarly work in different fields of psychology, cognitive neuroscience and developmental biology. Not all of my references defend my point of view to be sure.
Of course what constitutes an infant precisely is debatable as well.
Once again thank you for your reply.
P.S. a little OT but the infant also develops an ego-ideal too. The newborn cries and shakes his baby rattle for attention.
Yet humans are born very vulnerable and "premature" compared to many other animals:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bD...&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
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