Self-Other Differentiation

From birth to the first 18 months the infant’s identity is fused with caregiver, and, with maturity, the infant individuates from caregiver to form his/her own identity. The infant needs to fuse and attach first before it can later individuate to form a sense of self-reference. This likely stems from the state of brain maturation of cortical areas shortly after birth. Premature individuation, as during the state of insecure attachment, is perceived as stressful and as breaching this state of fusion and need for the social motivational for love.

Self-other differentiation underlying the future development of self-recognition begins at birth. Michael Lewis (1981-pages 403-405, 1987-pages 429-432) has developed a model for conceptualizing the progression of self-other differentiation and the concomitant development of self-recognition. The description of his stages of development have been augmented, enhanced, and clarified by the findings of others.

• During the first period, birth and three months, the infant learns to differentiate or identify the unique qualities of the significant other providing care (mother) (Ainsworth, 1969) and assesses how to behave to generate outcomes for need satiation and elimination of discomfort caused by hunger, thirst, wetness, social isolation, insecurity, etc. During this period as well the infant’s physiological and anticipatory mental states become synchronized with caregiver intervention to form the infant’s “prototype for later dyadic psychological regulation, which is characterized by coordinated sequences of behavioral interactions (between the two)” (Sroufe, 1990, p. 285). This “elaborate action-outcome pairing” is forming the basis for a means-and-ends relationship (Lewis, 1981) and a future working model of unitary representation of the infant’s social world (Case, 1991). Maternal sensitivity, desire, and responsiveness for quickly meeting infant’s physiological and social needs during feeding at 3-6 weeks of age, i.e. touching, vocalizing, establishing tender eye contact with baby (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972), has been associated with “clear-cut unambivalent attachment toward the mother” (Bell, 1969, p.308). Maternal responsiveness is also associated with instilling a sense of well-being that smoothes out baby’s temperament, increases tolerance for frustration, and reduces fussiness and crying, when compared with babies of less sensitive less baby-centered mothers (Ainsworth & Bell, 1969).

• During Lewis’s second period (three-eight months) the infant tests the means-ends relationship (with mother) and uses rudimentary cognition to underlie behaviors during social interactions. Social behaviors are a “function of the caregiver’s responsiveness to the infant (Sroufe, 1990, p. 285). Furthermore the infant’s sense of self as object and “sense of personal agency” (Case, 1991, p. 218) is reflected in the infant’s ability for intentionally swiping at a mobile or knocking over blocks. These abilities provide the infant with feedback, “I can do it!” or “I did it!” These abilities also provide an infant with an “explicit model of (his/her) own capabilities” (p. 218) and “core of an emerging me-self”‘ (Case, 1991, p. 219). Maternal responsiveness to baby’s cries at this time also promotes a sense of personal agency. This social agency later facilitates a sense of social competency and self-esteem during social interactions. Stranger anxiety emerges at approximately 6 months of age when an infant is able to differentiate between familiar caregivers and unfamiliar strangers for the first time during his/her development (Gesell, 1952; Ilg et al., 1981). Withdrawing behavior from strangers has been associated with electroencephalogram frontopolar activity and increasing salivary cortisol levels (Buss, Schumacher, Dolski, Kalin, et al., 2003). The infant is however unable to display withdrawing and retreating behaviors from strangers until approximately 9 months (Gesell & Thompson, 1934).

• Up until this point the infant has been learning to differentiate the principle caregiver (mother) from others and has been learning about his/herself through the nature of maternal responsiveness, i.e. is the caregiver responsive; does he/she emotionally satiate the infant or does he/she ignore baby’s cries and avoid eye contact; does this frustrate and spur the infant on to either demand and insist to be heard (Bell & Ainsworth, 1972) or does baby give up and disengage attention from non-responding mother (Field, 1994).

• Lewis’s third period (eight-twelve months) is characterized by increased social referencing, i.e. the infant’s growing ability to adopt the emotional attitudes of another or attribute his/her feelings to another (Meltzoff, Gopnick, Repacholi, 1999, p. 22). According to Inge Bretherton this is an intersubjective self, where the infant realizes “that inner experience, attention, intentions, and affective states can be shared with another” (1988, p. 85). For instance, as mother grunts in disapproval her infant looks up to reference to the emotion emitted in her face and tone of voice. “These are the beginnings of the infant’s ability to monitor the attention of others to (him/)herself, and thus the beginnings of a true self-concept” with respect to social validation (Tomasello, 1995, p. 451). When mother is responsive to emotional needs for nurture and reassurance, mother implicitly imparts that 1.) the infant is lovable; 2.) the infant can control outcomes when mother responds; 3.) the infant can achieve the goal of wanting mother’s response; 4.) the infant is worthwhile and valuable; and 5.) the. infant feels good. When mother does not respond she implicitly imparts to the infant that 1.) the infant is not lovable and unwanted; 2.) the infant can’t control outcomes and is therefore helpless; 3.) the infant cannot achieve the goal of wanting mother’s response and is not good enough for her to respond; 4.) the infant does not have enough value and is unimportant; and 5.) the infant feels empty and in pain. This is the start of the “ontogeny of a sense of social self” (Tomasello, p. 452) and development of appraisals of self in interaction.

• As the infant transitions toward eight-nine months, abilities for object permanence also start to emerge. Object permanence is evidenced in an infant’s persistence in searching for a desired object soon after its removal from a specific location or if it is obscured from sight. This suggests the development of a rudimentary internal sensory spatial representation of physical objects in mind (Piaget, 1954). Person permanence (Bell, 1970; Bowlby, 1980), or the infant’s awareness of a change in mother’s location, also starts its earliest emergence at around this time. Securely attached infants at 8 &Frac12; – 11 months of age tend to acquire person and object permanence earlier than insecurely attached infants (Bell, 1970). Some degree of self-permanence (Lewis, 1981) at this age suggests an emerging onset of self-recognition, rudimentary identity, and differentiation of self from significant other (mother). Self-identity is normally observed in the nine-month-old infant’s ability to briefly but momentarily direct his/her attention to an alteration on his/her facial mirror reflection (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979).

• At around 8 months the infant is beginning to experience stress-related anxiety in response to unprepared maternal separation (Bingham & Harmon, 1996) that peaks around 9-13 months and resolves from around two years of age onward. Infant separation distress suggests some awareness of one’s own emotional vulnerability in absence of the tangible self-other (baby-parent) relationship, especially when that separation is longer than initially anticipated (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978, p. 269). This is also suggestive of the infant’s emerging ability for anticipating caregiver behavior, indicating “a coordination of present action with past experiences and with expected future events?” (Sroufe, 1990, p. 288). Self-other differentiation and self-recognition at this point underlies and signals the onset of conservation of self and self-identity.

• The fourth period (twelve-eighteen months) is characterized by increased internally and mentally represented objects and events, which mediate the ability for problem solving solutions and experimentation (Wadsworth, 1989). Increasing internalization allows self-recognition to become less dependent on direct self-other referencing and more dependent on inner mental feature analysis during tangible social interactions with significant others (Lewis, 1987). As the toddler approaches eighteen months of age, the toddler’s social individuation is reflected in the ability for recognizing oneself in a mirror and differentiating oneself from others in photographs (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, 1979). Increasing sense of self-consciousness and embarrassment during the mirror recognition task at or before eighteen months reflects emerging self-recognition (Lewis, 1993; Lewis, Sullivan, Stanger, & Weiss, 1989). Interestingly the insecurely attached infant or toddler emits a more “mature self-recognition pattern” than the securely attached infant (Lewis & Brooks-Gunn, & Jaskir, 1985). This is probably a manifestation of prematurely imposed self-differentiation and emotional autonomy development in response to frustrated attempts at proximity-seeking for close bodily contact and reassurance and periods of loss of attachment (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

• Michael Lewis’s identification of a fifth period (eighteen-thirty months) is very important. For this reason its components will require further elaboration and expansion in subsequent sections.

References

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