Do Infants Possess Awareness?

Awareness is a concept that is heavily debated and researched. An important distinction that has yet to be discovered is when infants become truly conscious. In The Ravenous Brain by Daniel Bor, Bor asks important questions relating to what defines the start of consciousness. Is it when the fetus is “kicking and punching away on a regular basis,” or when the fetus “wakes up in the sudden, shocking moment of birth?” He gives even more examples of times when consciousness could begin in an infant. His personal experience from watching his baby daughter leads him to think that there could be a “strong sense of awareness soon after birth,” but he cannot confirm this because the behavioral approach tends to fall short due to the lack of signs of awareness so early on in development.

               Luckily, there has been new research finding strong signs of awareness in very young infants. In an article on livescience.com, writer Stephanie Pappas outlines the study published in the journal, Current Biology. The study was conducted by Maria Laura Filippetti and her colleagues in which they focus on the infants’ awareness of their own bodies based upon an adult study. That study found that adults believe that a rubber hand is their own when they see it on video when their real hand is stroked at the same time. Filippetti tested 40 newborns ranging from 12 hours to 4 days old who were shown a video of the baby’s face being stroked by a paintbrush. They also delayed stroking by five seconds and then proceeded to repeat the test, but with the baby’s face being shown as upside down. The researchers found the babies to view the screen longest when shown the video of their faces right side up, which indicates they likely have an awareness of their face. The findings imply that “babies are born with the basic mechanisms they need to build body awareness.” More testing definitely needs to be done, but the findings do correlate with Bor’s opinion that he made from observing his daughter. Awareness could definitely start very soon after birth.

Pappas, By. "Babies Are Born with Some Self-Awareness." LiveScience. TechMedia Network, 21 Nov. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2014. <http://www.livescience.com/41398-baby-awareness.html>.