When does a baby become self-aware?

when it pass the turing test

a year maybe.

in my Psy class they said about a year

Please define self aware. This is an area of interest to me, although not one in which i have great knowledge or expertise. If, by self aware, you mean the process by which a child is able to identify its own stream of consciousness ie. becomes aware of its conscious separate identity, I would have thought considerably later than one year, given the cognitive and linguist capabilities required, both to come to this conscious awareness, and to be able to verbalise its nature, even if only to itself.

If you mean, when does a child start to act as a separate ego and identity, then that probably happens before birth. from the physical evidence available.

Now Ill go away and look up turing test.

Aha! thats why it rang a bell. I didn't think I was familiar with it through child psychology, but had heard of it through science fiction. Its a test to determine artificial intelligence. Yes definitely older than a one year old (at least I would want my ai to be more intelligent and self aware than a one year old)

Can you be more exact ?

As in when does a baby start making it's own choices. Ability to have thoughts and emotions. The stuff that science can't define as brain functions.

I know people in their 40s and 50s who haven't gotten there yet!

Mr Walker brings up good points. It's a broad question with a broad answer. "Sometime between conception and death," would be a good answer. There probably isn't one moment that can be pinpointed as the exact moment the switch is flipped and a child becomes self-aware. Plus, we don't have a universal definition of what self-awareness is.

Well, babies seem to have emotions immediately - they cry when they are left alone, can be afraid, etc.
However, with about 2,5-3 years of age they become self-aware. They will start to use words like "I" and "mine" and also express wishes, etc. This can possibly also explain why people usually have no earlier recollections - most people have memories from the third year on.

The whole idea got me thinking after reading an article about how the human brain is more of a filter with a spot on the frontal lobe referred to as the "god filter". A theory giving by the author was that a lot of early childhood memories are blocked from being recalled due to the fact the child’s brain wasn’t completely developed and which allowed things to pass by the various filters which later blocks the child’s experiences. I believe it was a theory I read in one of my books by Dr. Fred Alan Wolf. It is just a cool idea how the brain filters out powers of our “soul”.

One of the simplest self-awareness test I've seen was done with primates, though it can't be applied to all animals. The researchers simply put of spot of white dye on various monkey's and apes heads the were shown a mirror. Monkeys always react by showing defenisive statures, indicating they are not able to recognize that they are looking at themselves. Apes on the other hand tried to wipe the spot off their heads when a shown a mirror, indicating a high level of individual self awareness.

I would say so , too.

That's kind of funny, I read in some parenting magazine a few years ago that you can do this kind of test on your child to see if they are self aware yet. I did it to my daughter, she was a little under a year. I stuck a sticker on her head, but she didn't realize it. Then I showed her a mirror, and she had no idea that she was looking at herself. In fact, she tried to get the sticker off the forehead of her reflection.

It wasn't until almost 2 years old that I stuck the sticker on her head, and showed her a mirror, that she actually reached up to her own forehead and took it off. It's in her baby book. I had no idea that was a test they performed on primates. Well, I performed it on my own little primate.

Good question. To my mind, 2 solutions are possible. One is that self-awareness is learned, "developed". In this case it is sensible to assume that it is the product of several contributing happenings, experiences, which eventually result in the emergence of self-awareness. And this is where I disagree with OptimisticSceptic, who said "There probably isn't one moment that can be pinpointed as the exact moment the switch is flipped and a child becomes self-aware." If after an early case of such a "contributing experience" (CE) the child is not self-aware yet, more "pieces of the puzzle" are needed, there will be a point, imho, when a last piece of CE is added, making the puzzle a whole, upon which the child will realize the separate existence of his self, though what it might "look like" to them, don't ask me. I don't believe that a child is first not aware of its self, then "quarter-aware", "half-aware", etc. How would you describe such states? "I think I exist, but I'm not so sure yet." I don't think so.
Instead, I propose consideration of solution no. 2. The child is self-aware from the moment of conception. Now for this one to be acceptable you would need to presume certain prerequisites to be true which would eventually give the following picture. At the moment of conception the spiritual being waiting to go through the "human experience" enters the concieved egg. Initially it is able to percieve only through its "conventional", "spirit ways", which will shift to physical sensory perception as soon as its nervous system reaches a certain degree of development enabling it to process stimuli received from the physical sensors. First there is not much to sense as the sensory organs are not developed enough. When they have developed enough, it can start to discover this brand new state of being called physical existence, new ways of perceiving, changing position, communicating, etc. As soon as it is acquainted enough with these new ways (2-3 years of age or whenever), then it can start EXPRESSING (if unwillingly) the fact that it is self-aware, which does not mean that it is when it (all of a sudden) BECAME self-aware.
Of course if you don't believe we exist before we are born, find yourself another way to deal with the self-awareness issue. Mine is just a theory I just made up now based upon my recent readings (not necessarily belief). I think it's just as good as another. Hope it helped and gave something to ponder.

P. S.: I think the mirror experiment is flawed, as being self-aware is not enough to "pass the test", you also need to realize what a mirror is. Put a mirror before a tribesman in the amazon who has never seen one, I don't think he will reach for the sticker on his own forehead, unless he had similar experience with the surface of a lake or river and knows what he looks like. Otherwise, he will just wonder where the hell that new tribesman popped out from. I can't think of a good way of testing presence of self-awareness right now, but if noone has come up with a better one than this mirror one before, I don't think I'll be the first to discover one. I think there is no way to prove anything beyond doubt.

I'm cool with that!


This is another version of Zeno's paradox, and where we are finding our disagreement. I put to you that I am more self-aware now as a 38 year old than I was at 28, and then I was more than at 18, and so forth. Sometime in the future, I may become less self-aware (my family has a slight but real history of senile dementia; fortunately, we also have a large history of dying old after very active lives!) I believe it is an ongoing process, not stages.


The only argument I have against that is that it's not testable. BUT... I do believe that memory is organic in nature, and I do believe (as a matter of my Christian faith) that I have a soul that is the essence of my identity. That is also not testable.

I think we also agree that memory may be purely an organic function. Without the fully functional organic machinery for it to rest on, we may not be able to form memories. Now, we get into the question of how much our memories influence who we are, but that's another thread unto itself, methinks.



Agreed. The mirror test seems more like a test for self-identification and not self-awareness.

Sorry. I meant to add a little bit more about why I referenced Zeno's paradox, and why that's different from what I was describing. Now that I think about it, though, I may have read too much into what you were saying.

In the "half-aware to three-quarters aware" concept, we would always approach self-awareness but would never reach it. We would always have to go half of the way that is left to get to our destination.

My point was... lost in the haze of sleep deprivation. Oh, well. I just don't think there is an "Ah-HAH! I'm Somebody!" moment that specifies when self-awareness begins. I believe it is gradual.

I think I interpreted self-awareness here as self-realization (SR). I think SR cannot take stages. Self-awareness, sure. However, I don't think the poster of the topic was uncertain concerning this, or for that matter, that anyone is. I think s/he meant SR.

it doesn't happen all of a sudden.....you become more knowing with your surroundings and eventually you will get aware of yourself and environment......