Week 10 - the self

• touch is seen to develop prior to other senses. This is supported by lots of evidence (see one note)
• touch can be seen as the sensory scaffold on which the other senses built and provides direct info about the body
• phantom limb syndrome is evidence of us having an innate bodily self representation as even when the limb is not there its still represented in our minds
• Meltzoff and Moore found infants make a map between what they see and feel known as "active intermodal mapping" which occurs between the senses during tasks
• tongue protrusion only thing to have positive results associated with it in experiments
• Ooestenbroek tried to get babies to imitate certain gestures but these were not imitated anymore then control gestures. Undermines the innate imitation idea
• Can be seen evidence for innate bodily self due to it being seen that our mouth anticipates the arrival of a hand and opens it prior to this. (innate postural schema)
• evidence of somatotopic cortical responses in preterm babies. Somatosensory processing in the brain spreads out responses to the hands and feet
• Filippetti et al. (2013): Newborns are sensitive to visual-tactile correspondences on the face and a mirrored face
• Babies can be shown to have multisensory body representations due to responding more to synchronous brushing on video and own face
• the fact that babies are able to distinguish speed and congruency shows that they have multisensory representations
• visuo tactile co location is developed by 4 months where they have a sensitivity to relative spatial locations
• Body representation evidence: Imitation, hand mouth co-ordination, early somatotopy, mutisensory body representations
• By 10 months infants showed accurate visual responses at the same time as manual. Before at 6.5m higher inaccuracies were shown. This was in a task to localise touch
• manual orienting responses to vibrotacticle stimuli in crossed and uncrossed hands showed that at 6.5m there were more incorrect manual responses but at 10 were uneffected by crossing
• postural and behavioural both remap at similar time scales in terms of neurally and this occurs in the first year.
• children demonstrated a stronger sense of RHI then adults. Reliance on proprioceptive cues to hand position increased with age. By 10 you are at similar levels of representation then adults
• Full body illusion used to create an out of body illusion driven by multisensory aspects. Only seen in older children and adults
• best evidence for early body representations comes from observations that young infants perceive visual-tactile synchrony and colocation on the body
• mirror rouge test has lipstick on the head and mirror but infants which are undeveloped only touch the mirror or look at it instead of relating this to theirself
• mirror rouge test therefore involves metarepresentation
• Neisser, 1995 rejects the mirror rouge task and defines 5 types of self awareness- ecological, interpersonal, conceptual, tempirally extended and private self
• Newborns burst pausing can be seen to show innate preparation for conversations and scaffolding for this
• Meltzoff (2007) - Babies have a predetermined ability to connect with others through imitation
• Infants are also aware of others and they are at one with people, perceiving themselves and others in a "supramodal" code
• the like me hypothesis is that imitation gives infants access to other peoples perspectives on the world
• Meltzoff (1988): 14-month-old infants imitate strange actions after 1 week delay
• at 14 months in the bulb study they will learn through imitation that turning a light on with their head is the easiest way to do it
• when the hands are free they are less likely to use their head due to this being less rational
• gergely (2006) suggests that imitation is a pedagogical adaptation where infants repeat what they have been taught
• can be seen to be interaction in the uterus in twins. Increase in movements towards twin between 14 and 18 weeks gestation
• sticker test similar to mirror test but while watching a video of yourself with a sticker on you. Infants will only locate the sticker in real time video
• Sticker test considered to reveal the gradual development of the "temporally extended self" supporting both constructionist and maturational accounts of the developing self
• a crucial part of self knowledge is metarepresentation - being aware of ones own mental state. This plays an important role in successful cognitive processes
• deceptive box test (Perner, 1987) tests for metarepresentation due to testing childrens honesty about what they thought was in a box. 4 yo pass whereas 3 yo fail.
• Goupil (2015) when infants are given the opportunity to ask for help in diffficult conditions they are more successful as a result. This is due to them being aware of their own certainty (metarepresentation)
• goupil (2016) showed infants demonstrate an error-related negativity which reflects error monitoring and metarepresentation in adults. Southgate thought this might just reflect the weaker memory trace and its effect on behaviour
• Bulgarelli (2019) used FNIRS to compare resting state functional connectivity in infants classified as recognisers and non in the mirror rouge task. Recognisers showed greater activity of the default mode network then non recognisers
• maturational view - michael lewis - self awareness emerges gradually as the brain matures, particularly the temporal parietal junction
• body representations are at the heart of the relationship between perception and action - we need to perceive our limbs in order to act