Self-awareness is key to maintaining good mental health. By understanding your thoughts, feelings, and triggers, you can better manage stress, improve emotional regulation, and recognize when to seek help. It helps you stay grounded, make healthier choices, and create a deeper sense of balance and well-being in your daily life. Building self-awareness is a powerful step toward long-term mental health resilience.
How Does Self-Awareness Develop? Self-awareness begins to emerge in infancy, with evidence showing that even newborns can differentiate between self- and non-self touch. By around one year of age, this sense of self-awareness becomes more complex and continues to develop significantly by 18 months.
Self-Awareness and the Mirror Recognition Task. One way researchers measure self-awareness is through the mirror self-recognition task. In a classic study by Lewis and Brooks-Gunn, infants with a red dot placed on their noses were shown a mirror, and those who reached for their own noses—rather than the reflection—demonstrated early signs of self-awareness, a behavior rarely observed in children under one year old.
Levels of Self-Awareness
- Differentiation: A baby begins to acknowledge their own reflection. They may detect there is something different or special about looking at their reflection.
- Situation: A baby begins to recognize their own reflection, being, and movements as separate from those around them.
- Identification: This is the stage during which a child fully knows that it is their own reflection in a mirror. They know, “This is me.”
- Permanence: They have a complete sense of themselves and can identify themselves in pictures or videos, even as their appearance changes.
- Self-consciousness: A child adapts a third-person point of view of themselves; they become aware of the idea that others perceive them in certain ways. This may result in feelings such as pride or shame.
This study highlights the developmental milestones of self-awareness, showing that the ability to recognize oneself emerges gradually in early childhood. The mirror self-recognition task provides valuable insight into how self-perception evolves over time, laying the foundation for more complex cognitive and social abilities. Understanding these stages of self-awareness helps us appreciate the intricate process of how we come to know ourselves.
Reference: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-awareness-2795023
