Filippetti Maria Laura, Tsakiris Manos
Department of Psychology University of Essex.
Psychology Department Royal Holloway University of London.
Infancy. 2018 Jul-Aug;23(4):577-590. doi: 10.1111/infa.12236. Epub 2018 Mar 2.
Leading up to explicit mirror self-recognition, infants rely on two crucial sources of information: the continuous integration of sensorimotor and multisensory signals, as when seeing one's movements reflected in the mirror, and the unique facial features associated with the self. While visual appearance and multisensory contingent cues may be two likely candidates of the processes that enable self-recognition, their respective contribution remains poorly understood. In this study, 18-month-old infants saw side-by-side pictures of themselves and a peer, which were systematically and simultaneously touched on the face with a hand. While watching the stimuli, the infant's own face was touched either in synchrony or out of synchrony and their preferential looking behavior was measured. Subsequently, the infants underwent the mirror-test task. We demonstrated that infants who were coded as nonrecognizers at the mirror test spent significantly more time looking at the picture of their own face compared to the other-face, irrespective of whether the multisensory input was synchronous or asynchronous. Our results suggest that right before the onset of mirror self-recognition, featural information about the self might be more relevant in the process of recognizing one's face, compared to multisensory cues.
在明确的镜像自我识别出现之前，婴儿依赖于两个关键的信息来源：感觉运动和多感官信号的持续整合，比如看到自己的动作在镜子中反射时，以及与自我相关的独特面部特征。虽然视觉外观和多感官偶然线索可能是实现自我识别过程的两个可能因素，但其各自的作用仍知之甚少。在这项研究中，18个月大的婴儿并排观看自己和同伴的照片，一只手会系统地同时触摸照片中人物的脸部。在观看刺激物时，婴儿自己的脸要么被同步触摸，要么被不同步触摸，并测量他们的优先注视行为。随后，婴儿接受了镜像测试任务。我们证明，在镜像测试中被归类为未识别者的婴儿，无论多感官输入是同步还是异步，与看另一张脸相比，他们看自己脸部照片的时间明显更长。我们的结果表明，就在镜像自我识别开始之前，与多感官线索相比，关于自我的特征信息在识别自己脸部的过程中可能更重要。
