Browsing by Subject "itsetietoisuuden kehitys"

Emergence of self-awareness in children has typically been measured by the classic mirror mark test in which a child is placed in front of a mirror after a novel mark is discreetly placed on their face. Self-referencing behavior while looking in the mirror is typically interpreted as evidence of early self-awareness. Most children living in urban western contexts pass the test by the age of two. Development of mirror self-recognition has been considered universal. However, cross-cultural research indicates that the capacity to recognize one’s image develops later in children who live in rural, non-industrial sociocultural contexts. The objective of this thesis is to present these differences between different sociocultural contexts and review the proposed mechanisms behind them. Different cultures can be placed along a continuum of autonomy versus interdependence. In autonomous cultural contexts parents typically prefer a “distal” parenting style. It has been proposed that this parenting style facilitates the child’s capacity to form a representation of the self as a differentiated individual. Both autonomous parental socialization goals and a distal parenting style have been correlated with better performance in the mirror mark test. However, the available data is limited and the correlations between parenting variables and performance in the mirror mark test have not been found in all samples. It has been suggested that the cross-cultural validity of the mirror mark test might be poor. More research and possibly new measures of self-awareness are needed in the future.