Review

The Development of Self-Understanding fromInfancy throngh Adolescence

William Damon and Daniel HartClark University

DAMON, WILLIAM, and HART, DANIEL The Development of Self-Understanding from Infancythrough Adolescence CHILD DEVEXOPMENT, 1982, 53, 841-864 This review focuses on self-understanding, the cognitive basis for self-concephon Its purpose is to construct from the psy-chological literature a descnptive account of self-understandmg development between infancyand adolescence The paper begins by distinguishing self-understanding from other aspects ofself-concept, m particular self-esteem It is argued Aat a developmental model of self-under-standing is a necessary step m the assessment and study of children's self-esteem Next, thereview presents a justification for studying self-understanding separately from other social cog-mtive achievements (such as understandmg other people) With reference to William James'stheory, the self as a cogmtive concept is analyzed into its diverse components Empmcalstudies of self-understanding m infants, children, and adolescents are then summanzed andplaced within the theoretical framework of this conceptual analysis The review identifies thedevelopmental trends consistently uncovered by empincal studies and presents a chronologicalaccount based on these trends Finally, the review proposes a developmental model that out-hnes genetic and conceptual relations among diFerent aspects of self-understandmg This modelIS extrapolated from the available literature, which is sbll in a germinal phase, fiierefore, themodel IS considered speculative at this point It is hoped that the model wiU be subject tofurther empincal testmg in time and will provide a theoretical basis for more precise defimtionof developmental patterns m self-understanding between infancy and adolescence

Psychological studies of concept formahongenerally analyze how people understand aproblematical issue representing some importantfeature of human life Developmental studies

are similar in intent, except that they examines people's conceptual understanding at different, life periods, since developmentalists assumeI that with time the cognibve bases for people's

conceptual understandmg undergo substanbalchanges In both developmental and nondevel-

< opmental studies, the investigator's focus is onthe intellectual strategies, considerations, andprocedures by which a subject amves at anunderstanding of the problematic issue, andon the nature of the concepbon ultimately ex-pressed by a subject while reasoning aboutthe issue

This paradigm for concept-formabon re-search has dominated studies of both physicaland social intelligence from the earliest daysof experimental psychology to the present It

IS common to the logical reasonmg studies ofPiaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, and their followers,to the moral judgment studies of Kohlberg andhis followers, and to most contemporary lmesof research m cognibve development, includingmemory, perception, and social cognibve re-search However, although pervasive, this par-adigm has not been universal For the concCT)tof the self, an area that many consider to befocal for all others, a very different approachhas been followed

Self-concept research m psychology hasfollowed a course all its own Unbke researchin other areas of concept formabon, studjongself-concept development usually has meantstudying an evaluabve onentabon to the selfcalled "self-esteem " This is true of the vastmajonty of both developmental and nondevel-opmental studies considered by Wylie in herthorough review (Wyhe 1979) For example,of the 151 "developmental" studies a ted by

Preparahon of flws manuscnpt was supported m part by a grant to the first author fromthe Spencer Foundation We gratefully acknowledge the help of Wendy Praisner and JayeShupin Requests for repnnts should be sent to WiILam Damon, Department of Psychology,CSark Umversity, Worcester, Massachusetts 01610

ICkild DmOopmeta, 19S2, 53, 841-864 () 1982 by the Society for Research m Child Development, IncAll nghts rewrved 0009-3920/82/5304-0034101 00]

842 Child Development

Wyhe, over 80% focus on self-evaluation Inother words, psychological research on self-concept development generally has been limitedto research on children's self-esteem Studies ex-anuning the changmg nature of self-understand-ing dunng development have been so rare thatrecent commentators have expressed surpnseand dismay over their scarcity (Bnm 1976)

Esteem, unlike conceptual understandmg,IS an affective onentation and can be assessedaccordmg to its positive or negative valenceThat IS, measures of esteem determine the ex-tent to which a subject positively or negativelyvalues an object The assessed vanable there-fore IS the subject's affective onentation towardan object, once the positive or negative direc-tion of the subject's onentation has been es-tabhshed, the measurement indexes are essen-tially quantitative Conceptual understandmg,on the other hand, is a cognitive activity thatmust be assessed in quahtative terms A subjectdoes not achieve positive or negative under-standmg of an object, and there can be no wayof determimng how much imderstandmg a sub-ject has m a quantitative sense Rather, theanalysis of understanding rebes on descnptiveaccounts of cogmtive processes that people usein their search for comprehension

Why have psychologists approached thestudy of self-concept through an affective andquantitative dimension like esteem rather than,as IS more typical in concept-formation research,through a cogmtive framework, like understand-mg? Part of the answer is, no doubt, the sharedassumption among child psychologists and edu-cators that children's positive and negative self-feelmgs are lmphcated m children's social rela-tions, school performances, mental health, andsuccessful adaptation to the world m general(Jersild 1952, Rosenberg 1979) The suspectedpractical importance of self-esteem no doubthas encouraged many psychologists to designways of measunng it quantitatively and deter-mming its antecedents and correlates

Despite the practical appeal of self-esteemas a research topic, psychologists have not gen-erally met with success m using self-esteem asan explanatory factor Wyhe concludes her re-view with a complamt that "the most impressivethmg which emerges from an overview of thisbook" IS "the widespread occurrence of null orweak findmgs" in studies relatmg self-esteem toachievement, ability, and mterpersonal relations,as well as a host of other antecedent or conse-quent vanables (Wyhe 1979, p 690) A pe-rusal of Wylie's review reveals that this is even

more true of the child studies than of the adultstudies As Wyhe points out, these null andweak results fiy m the face of common sense,since we have many mtuitive reasons to believethat self-regard should be importantly connectedwith successful adaptation to life These areareas, she writes, m which "theory and conven-tional wisdom very confidently predict strongti-ends" (Wyhe 1979, p 690) What, then, hasinterfered with what should be a straightfor-ward attempt to estabhsh empincal relationsbetween self-esteem and other cntical life vari-ables'* Wylie's own speculations concem themethodological inadequacies mherent m exist-ing self-esteem scales We are m accord withthis concem, but also beheve that these in-adequacies stem from a deeper problem notsolvable by a piecemeal correction of self-es-teem instruments

There are many self-esteem scales, reflect-ing a variety of assumptions concerning the na-ture of the self-concept Some measures ( eg ,Rosenberg 1965) are based upon subjects'globalassessments of their own self-worth, as reflectedby how strongly subjects agree or disagree withstatements like, "On the whole I am satisfiedwith myself" Other measures ( e g . Cooper-smith 1967, Piers & Hams 1964) assess sub-ject's feelmgs about a range of self-attributes,some specific and some quite general ("I ampopular", "I am a good person") Some scaledesigners have consciously attempted to selectitems that are at least comprehensible acrosswide age ranges, thus avoiding the too commonmistake of blmdly applymg items developed foradults to populations of children (see Wyhe[1974] for a cntical review) But of all the self-esteem scales in the current literature, none an-ticipates or "corrects for" developmental trans-formations m the conception of self In othCTwords, there is no measure of self-esteem thatincludes m its determmation of scores a recog-mtion that the conceptual bases of a subjectsself-evaluations may be differently constiiiedand differently weighed at different penods mthe subject's development

In order to accomplish this, self-esteemmeasurement would require as a prerequisitea develcmmental model of self-understancung toensure mat the test items of a self-esteem m-ventory reflected the major ways m which self-understandmg is organized and reorganizedthroughout the life span Failmg such a de-velopmental model, there can be no vahd mea-sures of self-esteem for children, adolescents,or adults (see also Bnm [1976] and Keller,Ford, & Meacham [1978] for further discussion

of this pomt) Even though self-esteem mayappear to be the central practical issue re-quirmg study, self-esteem cannot be assessedindependently of self-understanding, as psychol-ogists have traditionally attempted to do

A developmental model of self-understand-ing IS important for reasons beyond the vahdassessment of self-esteem Recent studies m so-cial cognitive development have shown thatsocial concepts require their own developmen-tal analyses (Damon 1977, 1979, Flavell & Ross1981, Turiel 1978) Self-understanding is a cru-cial constituent of a person's understandmg of

* his or her social world Unlike concepts of rela-tions (fnendship, authonty) or concepts of reg-ulations (fairness, social riiles, conventions), dlof which serve to connect the individual with

society, the concept of self provides one withan understandmg of one's differentiation fromothers m society In this way, it establishes thecognitive basis for one's identity as a imique

, individual and for one's special position, status,and role withm the social network Though not

J synonymous with personality, it is the concep-I tual underpmnmg of it But despite its lmpor-1 tance as a social concept with developmentalI significance, self-imderstandmg has received rel-I atively little attention from researchers studymgI social cogmtive devel(^ment (Shantz 1975,' m press)

I Understanding Self in Comparison andI Contrast with Understanding Others

The relative lack of interest m studymg^ self-conception developmentally may be due mS part to a long tradition that asserts the sim-I llanty between imderstandmg self and under-' standing others (Baldwm 1902, Kohlberg 1969,I Lewis & Brooks-Gunn 1979, Mead 1934, Pia-I get 1932/1965) If the two conceptual systemsI are structured the same, why study their devel-., opment separately? Baldwm initiated this view' m his discussion of the developmental processes- that produce self-understanmng Baldwm be-lieved that one comes to know the self only asone comes to know others and vice versa Inother words, both self and others are discoveredsimultaneously, m the course of interactions be-tween self and others From such mteractions,a person eventually makes mferences about thenature of self and others Both types of infer-encesself-inferences and other-inferencesmust be organized identically, smce they share

common source m the social mteracbons thathe person has experienced In particular, Bald-

wm emphasized two social mteractional pro-

Damon and Hart 843

cesses that ensure the smulanty between self-and other-knowledge imitation and ejectionThrough imitation, one takes onto the self thefeatures that one observes m the other, andthrough ejection (mutation projected outward),one endows the other with charactenstics thatone observes in the self So Baldwin wrote, "Mysense of myself grows by imitation of you, andmy sense of yourself grows in terms of myself'(Baldwin 1902, p 185), and, elsewhere, "Sothe dialectic may be read thus my thought ism the mam, as to its character, a personal self,filled up with my thought of others, distributedvariously as individuals, and my thought ofothers, as persons, is mamly filled up with my-self' (1902, p 18) A number of empincalstudies have demonstrated that, m many re-spects, the two types of knowledge do mdeeddevelop m parallel fashion in the mdividual(Livesly & Bromley 1973, Mullener & Laird1971, Secord & Peevers 1974)

But despite the important parallels pomtedout by Baldwin and his followers, there arealso many obvious differences between self- andother-understandmg In fact, these differencesoften overshadow the similanties, and may leadus to question whether statements made byBaldwin, Lewis and Brooks-Cunn, and others,have too strongly stressed the similanties whileneglecting the distinctions between self- andother-knowledge

For one thing, there is the distinction men-tioned by Baldwin himself between "that whichIS immediate and that which is objective" (1902,p 18) Although Baldwin chose to ignore thisissue, it hardly seems a minor point as far asthe development of cognitive structures is con-cemed It IS difficult to imagine that the entirerange of affect and cognition to which one hasaccess m the "immediate" expenence of selfcan be wholly and adequately representedthrough ejection or any other means for thesake of knowledge about others An equallyserious problem applies to the converse effortof gaming "objective" knowledge about the selfAs Taylor and Fiske have pomted out, a per-son's perceptual onentation is "focussed on thesituation m which he is behaving, and he hter-ally cannot see himself performing his actions"(Taylor & Fiske 1975, p 439) In conti-ast, aperson often can observe others' actions withlittle difficulty In Taylor and Fiske's ownstudies, they have found that" point of viewdoes indeed markedly determine causal inter-pretations of social situations" (p 445) Thispermanent difference m perceptual onentationstoward self and other seems certain to create

844 Child Development

differences m how self and other are conceivedFmally, there may be profound affective differ-ences between how one receives feedback onthe self versus how one receives feedback onothers One simply is emotionally invested mthe nature of one's own identity m a differentway than m the nature of others' identities, andthis may weU lead to differences m how per-sonal information on self and other is cogni-tively processed

The small bit of empincal research thatbears on this issue contams some indicationsthat self and other may indeed be construed msignificantly different ways Taylor and Fiske'sstudies have been noted above Nisbett, Ca-puto, Legant, and Maracek (1973) report thatone IS likely to attnbute one's own behavior mexpenmental situations to situational causes andfree wiU, while one is hkely to attnbute an-other's behavior m the same situations to per-sonahty traits and dispositions This phenom-enon has been rephcated m a number of studiesreviewed by the same authors Kuiper andRogers (1979) report that subjects more easilyand[ more confidently assess the apphcability ofa particular character adjective for themselvesthan for other persons Livesly and Bromley(1973) found that one is more likely to usecategones referrmg to mner ejqjenences (suchas motivation) when descnbmg self than whendescnbmg others, suggesting that the two typesof understandmg may have a different emphasisif not different concq>tual bases

Self-understandmg m itself is worthy ofsocial cognitive mvestigation because of itsunique role m social development and becauseof the hkehhood that it has properties distm-guishmg it from other social concepts

Historical Roots of Self-Understanding:William James's Theory

James contnbuted one of the most insight-ful and mfiuential theoretical analyses of theself found in the psychological literature, andhis discussion of self-understanding will serveas the framework withm which we wdl organizeand integrate a diverse body of research

For James, the self was divided mto twomam components, the "Me" and the " I "

The "Me" aspect is "the sum total of all aperson can call his" (James 1892/1961, p 44)The pnmary elements of the "Me" were whatJames called the "constituents " These constit-uents are the actual quahties that define theself as known They mclude all the matenalcharactenstics (body, possessions), all the so-

cial characteristics (relations, roles, personal-ity), and all the "spintual" charactenstics (con-sciousness, thoughts, psychological mechanisms)that identify the self as a unique individual Be-cause of a consistent trend m the studies to bereviewed, we will add a fourth constituent theactive qualities of self (capabdities, typical ac-tivities) James analyzed his three pnmary con-stituents qualitatively in terms of their natureand relation to one another His suggestion wasthat each individual organizes the constituentsof the "Me" mto a hierarchical structure thatassigns differential values to each of the van-ous matenal, social, and spintual constituentsJames's assumption was that all individualshierarchize the basic constituent "Me" cate-gories similarly, with "the bodJy me at the bot-tom, the spintual me at the top, and the extra-corporeal matenal selves and the vanous socialselves between" (p 57) Although James ad-mitted to some mdividual vanation in how theconstituents were formulated, he did not rec-ognize the possibihty that their hierarchical in-terrelations might vary, both across mdividualsand within one individual over time This is thesame error by omission found m recent self-esteem research, as we have noted aboveJames's theory may m fact have led later re-searchers astray m this regard, particularly smceJames himself offered some speculations abouthow to measure self-esteem

The "I" IS the "self-as-knower," the aspectof self that continually organizes and interpretsexperience m a purely subjective manner Theindividual is aware of the "I" through threetypes of expenences conttnuity, distinctness,and volition A stable self-identity denves froma sense of the contmuity of the self-as-knowerAs James wrote, " each of us spontaneouslyconsiders that by T he means something alwaysthe same" (p 63) A feelmg of individuality,of distmctness from others, also denves fromthe subjective nature of the self-as-knower"Other men's expenences, no matter how much I may know about them, never bear this vivid,this peculiar brand" (p 71) A sense of per-sonal vohtion IS perhaps the qumtessential ex-penence of the self-as-knower The very notionof subject denotes an active processor of expe-nence Through one's own thoughts and inter-pretations of the world, one exerts agency ofthe most fundamental kind over self Finally,implicit m the expenence of each of these sett-features (contmuity, distmctness, and volition)IS the additional second-order awareness of theself-reflecttvtty that knows the nature of self

James predicted that the 'T aspect of the 'self-duality would prove elusive to empirical

study precisely because of its indetermmate na-ture It IS difficult to observe or characterize aphenomenon that is totally subjective and that,therefore, may change unpredictably from mo-ment to moment Also, unlike the somewhatcircumscribed nature of the "Me" (which ismainly the collection of definitions that one andothers construct for one's self), the "I" poten-tially incorporates all of a person's interactionswith the world The "I" enters mto all of a per-son's experience smce it determines the uniquenature of all the person's interpretations ofevents, people, and things It determmes thevery meaning of life events, providing itselfeven with a perspective on itself James's con-clusion was tnat inquiry into the "I" was bestleft to philosophical rather than psychologicalanalysis, and that psychologists interested mthe self-concept should focus on the "Me "

But Mead offered a constructive solutionfor psychologists who would hesitate to denytheir discipline access to the aspect of self re-sponsible for such essential sensibilities as con-tinuity and vohtion Mead suggested approach-ing the "I" through the "Me" by studying m-dividuals' knowledge of both their objective andsubjective selves This amounts to a suggestionto focus the empincal study of self not on selfm all Its duality but, rather, on one's self-under-standing of both the "Me" and " I " The "Me"IS, by definition, the understandmg of self asobject, so that the study of the "Me" is by na-ture the study of self-understanding m one ofIts components Extending such study to the"I" means, in addition, explonng individuals'understanding of self-as-subject Self-under-standmg, then, mcludes in this comprehensivedefinition an individual's knowledge and reflec-tions on the self-as-knovra as well as on theself-as-knower It includes, in other words, anindividual's conception of "I" charactensticssuch as continuity, distmctness, volition, andself-reflection It also includes the rest of theindividual's self-definition, the mam body of the"Me " It does not mclude the actual "I" m theJamesian sense, because this extends beyondself-understanding to the entire domam of psy-chological functionmg Our definition of seu-understandmg as the totality of a person's con-ceptions of the "I" and the "Me" is the defini-tion that we shall use throughout this review

Chronology of Self-Understandingfrom Infancy to Adnlthood:A Review of Empirical Studies

The following review draws on a range ofstudies conducted with differmg purposes.

Damon and Hart 845methodologies, and theoretical onentationsMany of the studies were not ongmally in-tended to provide developmental accounts ofself-understanding But, regardless of a re-searcher's own goals, a piece of research oftensheds light on phenomena of mterest to otherresearchers The studies are descnbed m detailto reveal the diversity of methods and resultsfound m the hterature, we shall, however, tryto indicate how each study fits mto James'sanalysis, presented earlier The consistent threaduniting all the studies selected for this reviewIS that they illuminate the nature of self-under-standmg dunng at least one period of humandevelopment 'The overall aim of the review isto sketch a broader developmental picture outof a diversity of separate studies, all of whichm themselves may be relatively narrow in scopeA final caveat the subjects m these studies arelimited to American schoolchildren, and the on-togenetic trends to be outlined in the reviewmay be descnptive of only this population

Infancy Infants cannot reflect verballyon the nature of self, nor can they understandthe complex instructions required for engage-ment in most psychologists' tasks Because ofthese and other similar methodological consid-erations, studies of mfant self-understandmghave been narrower m scope than studies dur-ing later periods In fact, there has been onlyone expenmental paradigm that consistentlyhas vielded data on self-understanding dunnginfancy testing for self-recognition by showingimages of themselves through pictures, mirrors,or other visual media The monopolistic domi-nance of this paradigm has bmited our knowl-edge of infant self-understanding to the domamof visual self-recognition We do not knowwhether other modes of self-recognition (suchas through touch, hearing, and smell) mightprovide better indexes of infant self-understand-mg Nor do we know whether self-recognitionm general is a good representative of the fullrange of infant self-understanding Most impor-tant, we do not even know whether this limita-tion IS due to shortcommgs in our expenmentalingenuity, or whether it is an inevitable resultof infants' limited conceptual abilities (imply-ing, m the latter case, that visual self-recogni-tion does fairly represent the extent of mfantself-understanding)

Its limitations aside, the visual self-recog-nition paradigm has been used successfully byinvestigators and has produced several mutuallysupporting accounts of developmental trendsThe most commonand the oldest techniquefor studying visual self-recognition is observingsubjects' reactions to their own mirror images

846 Child DevelopmentThe scientific use of this technique with mfantsdates back to Charles Darwm, who noted m hisdiary descnptions of his 9-month-old son thatthe boy would look at a mirror and exclaim"Ah'" when his name was spoken (Darwm1877) Darwm concluded that this act signifiedhis son's first act of conscious self-recogmtionIn a nmeteenth-century observation of an mfantlooking m the mirror, Preyer reported a smular"conscious" self-recognition first appeanng at14 months m his mfant subject (Preyer 1893)

Modem mvestigators have also tumed tothe mirror as a tool for explormg mfants' self-recogmtion The first of these modem effortswas Dixon's observations of five infants fol-lowed longitudmally from ages 4 months to 12months (Dixon 1957) Dixon recorded the m-fants' reactions to mirrors placed at one end oftheu- cnbs, focusmg particularly on "behavioralsequences" hke smdmg at the image, talkmg toIt, trymg to touch it, and so on In addition,Dixon ngged an expenmental setup of one- andtwo-way mirrors and special lightmg that pre-sented to the infants images of self, another m-fant, and the mother, sometimes simultaneouslyand sometimes altemately

On the basis of his observations, Dixonreported a developmental sequence of self-rec-ognition that remained constant for all five sub-jects Dixon's developmental sequence consistedof four stages, the order of which did not varyacross infants, although the ages associated witheach stage did The first stage, which Dixon ob-served m infants' behavior at 4 months, hecalled "Mother" the mfant shows no sustamedmterest m its own reflection, but does show im-mediate recogmtion of its mother's reflection,the infant smiles, looks, and vocahzes at themother's image as soon as it is presented Atstage 2, called "Playmate" by Dixon, the mfantbecomes mterested m its own reflection, but

his behavior toward his mirror image islndistmguishable from that when placed beforeanother infant" (p 253) Stage 2 lasts untilabout 6 months Begmmng at around 7 months,accordmg to Dixon, the l^ant "relates the nur-ror image to himself' by repeatmg simple ac-tions (openmg the mouth) while gazing m themirror This is stage 3, which Dixon calls "Whodat do dat when I do dat?" The mfant is nowcapable of distmguishing between its own mir-ror image and that of another infant and prefersto mteract with the image of the other ratherthan that of the self At stage 4, begmnmg at12 months, the infant may even cry or tumaway from its own reflection, suppose(Uy for this

same reason The infant now unambiguouslydemonstrates recognition of self and other, shift-mg its gaze appropriately when asked, "WhereIS (X)?" "Where are you?"

Although Dixon's study estabhshed thefact of self-recognition m young infants andoffered some preliminary indications of devel-opmental trends, it left a number of unansweredquestions concerning the basis of self-recogm-tion at this early age From Dixon's observa-tional procedure, it is impossible to determmewhat the young infant recognizes m its own re-flection This IS because, as Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) later pointed out, mirror imagescontain at least two kinds of clues for self-rec-ognition contingency clues and feature cluesIn the case of the former, a person lookmg m amirror sees an image that moves immediatelyin tandem to the person's own physiologicalsensations of movement In the case of the lat-ter, a person lookmg m a mirror can observeimages of particular facial and bodily features,some of which may become familiar to the per-son through repeated observation It is easy tosee how an infant could use either contmgencyor feature clues to distmguish the mirror imagesof self and other Or the infant might use bothtypes of clues Dixon's e;q)enmental desi^ of-fered no means of isolating or disconfoundmgthese two types of self-recognition clues Theonly "feature" of self to which we know Dixon'smfants responded was their names, beginningat around 18 months (at the end of Dixon'sstage 4), which is most nearly categonzed as amatenal constituent of the "Me " In additionDixon's study is weakened by its small samplesize and lack of rehabihty and other psycho-metric procedures

Using an mgenious technique similar toone mtroduced by Gallup (1970) m chimpan-zee research, Amsterdam (1972) was able toisolate a type of facial feature that young m-fants can use m self-recognition In Amster-dam's expenment, infants' noses were surrep-titiously dabbed with rouge, and the mfantswere placed m front of mirrors and asked,"S^r and "Who's thatr Amsterdam recordedresponses similar to those noted by Dixon (smil-ing, vocalizmg, gazmg, touchmg), although inmore systematic fashion, with traditional reli-ability checks Also, Amsterdam's stiidy had afull sample size of 88 infants ages 3 through 24months, mcludmg two infants followed longi-tudinally from 12 to 24 months

Amsterdam defined full self-recognition asself-directed behavior mdicating awareness of

Damon and Hart 847the red spot on the nose Her assumption wasthat "the child's ability to locate a r&i spot onthe face shows that he associates his own facewith the face m the mirror " (p 304) Inaddition, of course, special attention to the redspot mdicates an awareness that the self hasstable facial features that do not mclude a red-dened nose Amsterdam reported that this typeof "full" self-recognition was found only at 20-24 months In addition, it was not until this agethat Amsterdam's infants showed other con-scious signs of self-recognition, such as "self-adminng behavior (strutting, preenmg) andembarrassed behavior (blushmg, coyness) Am-sterdam's conclusion, contrary to those of Dar-wm, Preyer, and Dixon before her, was thatconscious self-recognition, based on stable fea-tures of self, does not normally occur until theend of the second year of life Pnor to this, Am-sterdam found two of the phases descnbed byDixon (1) the "playmate" rihase (6-12 months),m which the child treats the image as an inter-actmg peer, and (2) a "withdrawal" phase(13-24 months), m which the child expressesweanness of the mirror image But, unlikeDixon, Amsterdam doubts that durmg eitherof these phases the infant "relates the mirror

< image to the self" Amsterdam suggests thats Dixon wrongly inferred self-recogmtion fromI the infant's particular concem with the contm-t gency aspects of its own mirror image, and,i despite this particular concem, the infant youn-

ger than 20 months sees only the image of astrange peer m the mirror

* Amsterdam's focus on feature recognition' provides a methodologically valuable means of' separatmg out distmguishable components off self-recogmtion, but one wonders whether she

has dismissed the significance of early contm-^ gency awareness too lightly Missmg from her

design IS a means of determinmg whether con-tingency awareness, either independent from orm combination with feature recognition, is an

^ mdex of self-recognition, however, she doesdemonstrate that at 20 months the infant doeshave some knowledge of the bodily constituentsof the "Me" and an awareness that these con-

^ stituents are continuous over timeIn a systematic senes of studies, Lewis and

Brooks-Gunn (1979) were able to present bothcontmgency and feature clues to mfants m anorderly and disconfounded way They separatedthe two types of dues by usmg a vanety ofmediums to present the child with the self sunage, such as mirrors, photographs, and video-tapes mirror images always move contingentlywith the self, photographed images never do.

and videotape images can be either contingentor noncontingent In one of their studies usmga mirror to present infants with their images,Lewis and Brooks-Gunn followed the same pro-cedure used by Amsterdam with mfants from9 months to 24 months of age Their resultsbasically parallel those of Amsterdam However,the authors found infants as young as 15 monthsresponded to their reddened noses This is ayounger age for the behavior than that reportedby Amsterdam

Lewis and Brooks-Cunn's videotape studieswere designed to further investigate the devel-opment of self-recognition by separating con-tingency and feature clues Infants' responsesto three types of TV images were compared(1) 'live" images of themselves, (2) images ofthemselves shot 1 week earlier, and (3) imagesof another infant In assessmg their subjects'responses to the TV images, Lewis and Brooks-Gunn made special note of the infants' ten-dencies to imitate and to "play with" the imageon the TV screen In addition, the infants' facialand vocal expressions were recorded as wellas their movements toward and away fromthe image

Subjects m the TV studies were the sameages as those m the mirror study (9 months andup), and the TV results nicely supplementedthe mirror-study findings Infants as young as9 months distmguished the hve TV image ofself from the other images presented, whichthey indicated by playing more with it and bygenerally responding more positively to it thanto the other images These results confirmDixon's tentative findmgs and indicate that ini-tial visual self-recognition is present at least asearly as 9 months and is based on the pnncipleof contingency when an image moves alongwith the self, it is possible at a very early ageto recognize the self in that image It shouldbe noted that other researchers ( eg , Papou-sek & Papousek 1974) have found signs of suchself-recognition even pnor to 9 months, al-though their techniques do not confirm this asconvmcmgly as Lewis and Brooks-Gunn's

Although the ability to use contmgency asa clue to self-recognition is present in he childas young as 9 months, mfants develop a greaterresponsiveness to contmgency as they growolder Lewis and Brooks-Gunn found a steadyincrease m infants' awareness of contingencythrough the second year of life But the moststnkmg developmental advance was not m theinfants use of contmgency but in their use ofphysical appearance m recognizing the self To

848 Child Development

imcover this developmental advance, Lewis andBrooks-Gunn compared their subject's responseswith the noncontingent televised self-image(shot a week ago) with their subjects' responsesto the televised image of another baby It wasnot until 15 months of age that infants distm-guished their own pretaped images from imagesof another chJd on the TV screen When theywere able to make this distinction, they smiledat and moved toward the other babys imagemore than toward their own image, and theyimitated and played with their own image morethan with the other baby's image These differ-ences m behavior, which began at about 15months, increased further as the infants grewolder Lewis and Brooks-Gunn speculate thatthe infants of 15 months and older were ableto distinguish their own images from the imagesof other babies by refemng to differences m thefacial features of the two, meaning that atabout 15 months infants begin to know whattheir faces look like

This developmental progression is con-firmed further by the findmgs of Lewis andBrooks-Gunn's picture study By showmg in-fants pictures of themselves and other babies,the researchers found the first clear feature rec-ognition of self m infants aged 1518 monthsSigns of this recognition included smilmg, gaz-ing, and pointing to one's picture when one'sname was called, as opposed to lgnonng orfrowning at the picture ot peers (In one smallpilot sample, the researchers found the smihngsign m irJants as young as 9 months, but onlyoccasionally and sporadically ) Smce pictoralimages are noncontingent on a subject's actionsbut do reveal facial and other physical cues, agetrends from the picture study coincide with theage trends from Lewis and Brooks-Gunn's TVand mirror studies

Further findings from the picture studysuggest some of the basic categones that in-fants, beginning at 15 months or so, use to iden-tify themselves These categones are sex andage When mfants of 15 months begin distin-guishmg themselves from others on the basisof noncontingent cues, they are particularly at-tuned to physical features associated with theirsex and their age They find it especially easyto tell themselves apart from opposite-sex babiesand from older persons The researchers believethat mfants are able to discern the distmctivefacial features that accompany sex and agefemales have different-shaped faces (as well asdifferent hair styles) from males, and babieshave faces and heads that are shaped differ-ently from those of older people In their lmtial

constructions of the self-as-object (the "Me"),infants focus particularly on facial features, asthe Lewis and Brooks-Gunn studies indicateOf all facial features, those associated with sexand age are particularly apparent to infants asthey begin constructing 'categoncal" knowl-edge of themselves

Surveying the preceding literature as wellas the results of their own studies, Lewis andBrooks-Gunn postulate that there are four majoradvances in infants' self-knowledge during tiiefirst 2 years of life The first of these advancesIS seen m infants younger than 3 months Sincethe infants m Lewis and Brooks-Gunn's studieswere all 6 months or older, the authors' descnp-tion of this first infant self-knowledge advanceIS conjectural, based on informal obseryationand outside sources m the psychological liter-ature From birth to 3 months of age, the initialorganizing principle to appear m mfants' self-knowledge IS an unlearned attraction to theimages of other people and especially to theimages of young babies This attraction showsup in a young infant's fascmation with mirrorimages, drawings, and pictures of faces, espe-cially when the face is that of the self or ofanother young infant The second advance oc-curring between 3 and 8 months of age m m-fant self-knowledge is the abibty to recognizethe self through contingency cues The essenceof this ability is the understanding that the selfIS the origin and cause of the moving visualimage that the subject sees in the mirror or onthe TV screen

The third self-knowledge advance, be-tween the infancy ages of 8 and 12 months, isthe association of certain stable categorical fea-tures with the self The infant now can go be-yond recognizing the self merely as the onginof paired causes and effects in the world andcan begin constructing the self as a permanentobject with endunng qualities In this manner,the permanence of the self is realized and be-comes an important organizing pnnciple for theinfant's knowledge of both self-as-subject andself-as-object Finally, the fourth mfancy ad- -vance, occurring throughout the second yearof life, IS the defining of the self through cat- :egoncal features alone, independent of any con- -tmgency knowledge that the subject may have ''

Although Lewis and Brooks-Gimn are re- 'femng to the physical constituents of the "Me" 'when they wnte of the development of knowl- 'edge of the categoncal features of self, there 'IS evidence mdicatmg that the child is aware of other charactenstics of the "Me "

As part of a larger study of cognitive de-velopment m the second and third years of life,Kagan (1981) mvestigated the child's wilhng-ness and ability to imitate an action perform^by an expenmenter with a variety of toys ^chchild was first allowed to play with a vanetyof toys for about 15 mm The eiroenmenter thenapproached the child, gamed the child's atten-tion, and demonstrated a symbolic act usmgseveral of the toys the child had been playingwith (the specific act to be performed was de-termined anead of time) Kagan found thatsome of the infants cned after observing theexperimenter's act, a reaction Kagan claims isdue to the mfant's recognition that he or sheIS not capable of performing that act Conse-quently, the child must be aware of the self'slimitations Grymg foUowmg an act was absentin infants 20 months old It peaked to 31% ofthe infants at 23, 24, and 25 months At 29months, no child cned following the act Thedata mdicate that the child becomes awareof the selfs action capabilities at around 24months of age The dechne m crymg shortlythereafter, according to Kagan, is due to thechild's mcreased abihty to perform the act or todeal with the selfs hmitations without cryingIt does not represent a decline m self-awareness

The assumption that self-awareness ap-pears around 24 months is further buttressedby Kagan's finding that children's self-descnp-tive statements ("I play", "I can do this") in-crease m frequency around this age Self-de-scnptive statements reflect self-awareness be-cause a chdd could not make meaningful state-ments about the self if the child were not awareof the self's qualities Kagan's research revealsthat, in addition to knowledge about the selfsphysical constituents, the child is aware of theselfs actions and capabilities, or active constit-uents Active constituents of the "Me" ( e g ,"I play", "I can tie my shoe") are quahtativdydifferent from the physical constituents of the"Me" (jeg, "I have red hair", "I have a bigbicycle") and must be treated as distmct areasin an accurate depiction of self-understandmgdevelopment We shall retum to this point mthe next section

Column 1 m table 1 summanzes the trendsrevealed by the infant research The remainingthree columns summanze trends from the child-hood and adolescent studies reviewed m thefoUowmg two sections

ChildhoodResearch on children's self-knowledge IS different in character from mfantself research for the simple reason that chddren

Damon and Hart 849are able to communicate their self-conceptionsverbally Because of this, the study of child-hood self-knowledge is not hmited to the studyof visual self-recognition, as it was dunng in-fancy Indeed, through the use of mterview andother verbal procedures, researchers have beenable to probe children's conceptions of manypsychological issues related to self These issuesinclude the nature of the self's basic compo-nents (including mmd and body), one's aware-ness of self, one's definition of self, self m com-panson to others, self m relation to others, andpomts of pride and shame in self From allthese diverse efforts, we can piece together achronology of self-knowledge as it develops inthe childhood years

In a broad-based study of children's "naiveepistemologies" (i e , their spontaneous philo-sophical analyses of the world), Broughtonasked children a number of open-ended ques-tions concerning the self, particularly focusingon "I" conceptions such as volition and distmct-ness from others (Broughton 1978) Brough-ton's questions were in the form of direct inter-rogations, like "What is the self" "What is themind!*" "What is the difference between themmd and the body?" As is traditional m clmicalinterviews with children, Broughton probed thechild's responses with a series of follow-upquestions From subjects' answers, Broughtondenved a developmental progression of naiveepistemologies that covers the penod fromchildhood through middle adulthood We shallconsider only the aspects of Broughton's outhnethat concern self-knowledge In this section, wedescnbe Broughton's two childhood levels, mthe next section, his two adolescent levels

In early childhood, according to Brough-ton, the self IS conceived strictly m physicalterms The self is believed to be part of thebody Usually this means the head, althoughother body parts are also cited, including thewhole body Accordingly, the child confusesself, mmd, and body Because of this type ofreasoning, young children typically express anumber of peculiar opinions unique to this earlylevel For example, because young children be-lieve that self and mind are simply parts of thebody, they often say that any body may have aself and a mind, including animals, plants, anddead people Further, since self is a body part,it can be descnbed in terms of matenal dimen-sions such as size, shape, or color Thus childrenat this level distinguish themselves from otherson the basis of their physical appearances andother material attnbutes I am different fromJohnny because I have blond hair, different

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852 Child Development

from that tree because I am smaller, differentfrom my sister because I have a bike Even thevolitional aspects of selfthat is, one's motiva-tions and "free will"are attnbuted to physicalbody parts The child might say, for example,that the self is the bram, and the brain tells youwhat to do

Later, when the child is about 8 years old,Broughton's second level of self-knowledgeemerges GhJdren now begm to understand themental and volitional aspects of self on theirown terms, removed from their direct hnks toany particular body parts In other words, chil-dren now begin to distinguish between mmdand body, although this distmction is not asfinely articulated as it will be m the adolescentyears The begmnmg distmction between men-tal and physical enables children to appreciatethe subjective nature of self One is distmctfrom others not simply because one looks dif-ferent or has different matenal possessions butbecause one has different thoughts and feelmgsThe selfs essential nature is therefore definedmtemally rather than externally and becomes amatter of psychological rather than physical at-tnbutes Broughton quotes from a 10-year-oldat this level "I am one of a kmd Therecould be a person who looks like me or talkslike me, but no one who has every single de-tail I have Never a person who tlunks exactlyhke me" (p 86)

Usmg different types of mterview proce-dures, Selman (1980) replicated much ofBroughton's developmental progression, mves-tigating both the changing understandmg of the"I," such as volition, and the constituents of the"Me " Rather than askmg children direct ques-tions, Selman posed the following dilemma"Eight-year-old Tom is trymg to decide whatto buy his friend, Mike, for a buthday partyBy chance, he meets Mike on the street andlearns that MJce is extremely upset because hisdog. Pepper, has been lost for two weeks Infact, Miice is so upset that he tells Tom, 'I missPepper so much that I never want to look atanother dog agam' Tom goes off, only to passa store with a sale on puppies Only two areleft, and these will soon be gone " Ghildren arethen asked whether or not Tom should buyMike the puppy as a birthday present Follow-up questions probe a number of psychologicalissues revolving around the perspectives of selfand other For example, sample questions are,"Gan you ever fool yourself mto thmkmg thatyou feel one way when you really feel another?"and "Is there an mside and an outside to a per-

son?" From children's responses to this dilem-ma, Selman has outhned three childhood levelsof self-awareness

Selman's first level, which he calls "phys-lcahstic conceptions of self," is almost identicalwith Broughton's first level At this level, thechild makes no distmction between inner psy-chological expenence and outer matenal ejcpe-nence In response to the Mike dilemma, chil-dren at this level typically wJl deny that aperson's statements and behavior can be distm-guished from the person's feelings "If I say thatI don't want to see a puppy ever agam, then Ireally won't ever want to " Since the child isnot aware of psychological expenence apartfrom overt physical attnbutes and acts, thechild views the self only in physical terms Theselfs vohtional tendencies are tied to specificbody parts and denve stnctly from the func-tioning of these parts, for mstance, "I am theboss of myself [because] my mouth toldmy arm and my arm does what my mouth tellsit to do" (p 95)

Later m childhood, according to Selman,children recognize differences between mnerand outer states, and define the "true self" interms of subjective inner states rather than ma-tenal outer states Unlike Broughton, Selmanbelieves that this developmental transformationin children's self-knowledge occurs m two levelsrather than m one First, writes Selman, chil-dren by age 6 or so realize that psychologicalexpenence is not the same as physical expen-ence, but they still beheve that the two typesof expenence are consistent with one anotherThen, by age 8 or so, the child realizes that theself can fool oneself as well as others becauseof discrerpancies between one's inner expenenceand one's outer appearance Thus, Mike mightreally feel that he wants another puppy (psy-chological expenence) even though he mightsay he does not (behavioral appearance) Atthis pomt, conscious deception becomes a pos-sibility for the child, because the child is ableto mampulate the relation between internal andexternal reahty The child now sees that the selfcan monitor its own thoughts m a more directway than others can This means that one canput on a facade that others may not be able topenetrate While the child admits that some-times one's facade will fool the self as well asothers, the child is also aware that generally theself has better access to one's own psycholog-ical expenence than do others This apprecia-tion of the pnvate, subjective nature of self, ac-cording to Selman, leads the child to a "r^ec-

', tive understandmg that the self is capable ofgaming inner strength by having confidence in

\ its own abilities" (p 100)' Although Selman's three levels add some

intricacies to Broughton's two-level progression,the two researchers agree on the basic child-

1 hood shift from physicalistic to psychological' conceptions of self Research by Guardo and

Bohan (1971) on the cognitive bases for self-identity in children ages 6 through 9 providesfurther evidence of this shift Guardo and Bo-han focused specifically on children's knowl-

' edge of four dimensions of self humanity, sex-uality, individuality, and continuity Humanity

' refers to the sense that one has human qual-ities distinct from other life forms Sexuality isthe awareness of one's own sex and sex roleIndividuality is the sense that one is unique inthe world Continuity refers to one's belief thatone IS connected with one's past and futureself Guardo and Bohan assert that, taken to-gether, these dimensions provide the individualwith a sense that he or she "is one being witha unique identity who has been, is, and wdl bea male (or female) human person separatefrom and entirelv hke no other" (p 1911) Thereader will recogmze in this assertion the majorelements of James's "I " Goncordant with Jamesand his many followers, Guardo and Bohan ap-proach the study of self with the point of viewthat the self is a psychological construct whosemajor function is to provide one with a cogni-tive sense of one's mdividuality Guardo andBohan's findings tell us how children between6 and 9 do this

In order to test for children's senses ofself, Guardo and Bohan asked their subjects ifthey believed that they could assume the iden-tity of another being Three types of being werespecifically mentioned by the interviewer a pet(testing for humanity), an opposite-sex peer(testing for sexuality), and a same-sex peer(testing for individuality) The researcher's as-sumption was that, if children believe that theycan assume the identity of another being, theylack the dimension of self on which the ques-tion focused In addition to these identity tests,the researchers tested for contmuity by askingsubjects whether they were the same personsin the past and future Follow-up questions forall items for children's understanding of thefour dimensions were asked For example, atypical probe question was, "Why do you thinkyou could never become a dog?^ In this man-ner the researchers could determine not onlywhether the child had a sense of humanity butalso the cognitive basis of that sense

Damon and Hart 853

Guardo and Bohan found that aU childrenin the 6-9 age range had a definite sense of allfour self-dimensions That is, virtually all sub-jects expressed belief m their own immutablehumanity, sexuality, mdividuahty, and conti-nuity This, of course, should come as no sur-prise to us, considermg that Lewis and Brooks-Gunn found some awareness of at least thelast three of these dimensions in infants youn-ger than 2 More reveabng, from a developmen-tal point of view, was Guardo and Bohan'sfinding that the conceptual basis for children'sbelief in these dimensions changes with ageSix- and 7-year-olds base their beliefs on theirphysical and behavioral characteristics For ex-ample, a 7-year-old might say that it would beimpossible to become just like a particular peerbecause that peer is shorter and not as good atbasketball Or the child might say that he willbe the same as an adult because he will havetbe same name Eight- and 9-year-olds usemany similarly physicalistic notions but alsoadd to their explanations some psychologicalones as well For example, a 9-year-oId mightsav that it would be impossible to assume afriend's identity because the friend has differ-ent likes and dislikes Guardo and Bohan'sstudy focuses more directly on the understand-ing of the "I" than do Broughton or Selman'sstudies, the mam thrust of the findings from allthese investigations is basically the same dur-ing middle childhood there is> a developmentalshift m self-knowledgefrom phvsicalistic topsychological conceptions

One recent study, however, has given usreason to modify the developmental sequencesuggested by the wntmgs of Broughton, Sel-man, and Guardo and Bohan In this study,Keller et al (1978) showed that very youngchildren (ages 35) think of the self more interms of activities than m terms of body partsor material attributes The researchers used sev-eral techniques to arrive at this conclusionFirst, children were asked to spontaneously sayup to 10 things about themselves Second, theywere asked to complete the following sen-tences "I am a " "I am a boy/girl who

" On these items, children respondedmost frequently with action statements, such as,"I play baseball" or, "I walk to school" Bodyimage answers ("I am big", "I have blue eyes")were far less common In fact, other than actionstatements, which constituted over 50% of chil-dren's responses, no other category of responseoccurred more than 10% of the time, althoughIt IS interesting to note that about 5% of eventhe youngest children's responses referred to

854 Child Development

their likes and dislikes, a psychological aspectof self In a further confirmation of this trend,the researchers gave children direct choices be-tween action and body image statements Todo this, the researchers asked subjects whichof the foUowmg types of statements subjectswould rather have wntten about themselves"Johnny has a mce face", "Johnny can brush histeeth " Ghildren overwhelnungly chose the lat-ter type of statement, mdicating agam theirpreference for action descnptions of the self

The results of Keller, Ford, and Meachum'sstiidy add a new dimension to our understand-mg of self-knowledge in early childhood Theseresults need not be taken as a contradiction ofthe physicahstic level proposed by the re-searchers cited above, as long as the notionphysicalistic is conceived broadly enough toinclude physical actions as well as body imageand matenal possessions In fact, this is in lmewith Selman's use of the word physicalisticSelman's illustrative examples of lus first self-awareness level mclude instances of childrenspeakmg about their actions However, for thesake of precise developmental descnption, itmay be wisest to separate the notion of activeself-constituents from the notion of physicalself-constituents, as we alluded to earlier in ourdiscussion of James In fact, m hght of Keller,Ford, and Meachum's study, we might con-clude that the active self predominates m thepreschool years This conclusion also accordswith earher research by Secord and Peevers(1974), who claimed, on the basis of free-response data, that kmdergarten children de-scnbe themselves almost exclusively m termsof activities like play However, we must givesome recognition to Broughton's and others'consistent evidence m favor of bodily and ma-tenal self-definitions m very young childrenEven if action does dominate self-knowledge atearly developmental levels, it is clearly usedalong with more blatantly physical notions hkebody image and matenal possessions It seemsthat elements of both active and physical selfcan be found m the preschool years As long aswe do not conflate action with other physical-lstic notions, we can see that self may be con-ceived m multiple dimensions even m the earlyphases of development

There are also reasons to believe that ac-tion contmues to be an important element molder children's self-knowledge, only m a some-what different way In their study of children'sfree responses to self-questions, Secord andPeevers report that, even by third grade, chil-dren descnbe the self pnmanly in terms of

activities But there is a new quahty m thethird-graders' active self-statements unlike pre-schoolers, who describe self in terms of its typ-ical activities ("I ride a bike"), older childrendescnbe themselves m terms of their active abil-ities relative to others ("I can ride a bike betterthan my brother") Secord and Peevers descnbethis as a shift from a focus on the selfs habitualaction to a focus on the selfs action compe-tencies It indicates that children are now dis-tinguishing themselves from others on compar-ative rather than absolute terms That is, theissue IS no longer what I do (or do not do) butwhat I can do well in companson with othersThis developmental shift serves the differenti-ating function of self, since it provides a sharpermeans of establishing one's differences as an in-dividual from others

A recent set of findings m social psycho-logical research confirms the developmentalshift noted by Secord and Peevers In a pro-grammatic series of studies. Ruble (in press)has investigated children's use of social com-pansons m their self-evaluations The basic de-sign of these studies was to give children a diflB-cult task and then to offer them feedback ontheir own performances as well as informationabout the performances of other children theirage Subjects were then asked for self-evalu-ations Ruble found that children younger than7 made almost no reference to the informationabout other children's performances Rather,they based their self-evaluations on the "abso-lute standard" of whether they completed thetasks In contrast, children over 7 frequentlycompared their performances agamst those ofothers and based their self-evaluations on suchsocial compansons Interestmgly, Livesly andBromley (1973) report remarkably similarquantitative results in their study of self-de-scriptions at around age 7, children's use ofcomparative competence notions m their de-scnptions of self and other tnples

We can see from the combmed results ofstudies reviewed m this section the early useand later transformation of active knowledgeof the self In addition, we know that the selfIS often defined physically at early ages, andthat psychological self-notions emerge towardthe end of chudhood There is also one furtheraspect of self-knowledge that can be found in ^children's statements the social self-constit-uents Livesly and Bromley (1973) have notedthat in childhood children refer to social groupmemberships m their self-descnptions A childmight say, for example, that he is a Boy Scoutor a Catholic This mdicates that, although the

social self does not seem to be as dommant dur-mg childhood as either the active or the phys-ical self, it IS occasionally present m the self-awareness of children at all ages, as is the psy-chological self These are indications of themultiple bases of self-knowledge durmg allphases of childhood development (see cols 2and 3, table 1)

AdolescenceThere is noteworthy con-vergence m findings from several independentlyconducted studies of adolescent self-under-standing Virtually all researchers have foundthat, with development, adolescent self-under-standing shows an mcreasmg use of psycholog-ical and social relational concepts for descnbmgthe "Me," a more promment behef m the "I" 'sagency and volitional power, and a tendencytoward mtegration of tne disparate aspects ofself into an internally consistent construct sys-tem In addition to these areas of agreement,some researchers have also reported other spe-cial features of adolescent thinking, such as anawareness of self-reflection (again a part of the"I" conception), that are not always apparentin every study because of methodological con-siderations Accordmgly, despite a wide overallconsensus concemmg general developmentaltrends, there do exist some important differ-ences among studies m their emphasis on par-ticular qualities that charactenze adolescentself-understandmg In this section, we shall firstreview those studies which investigate child-hood as well as adolescent development andwhich, therefore, have been in part summanzedin the previous section Then we shall reviewstudies that confine themselves mostly to pop-ulations of adolescents and which we have notcovered above

Selman's developmental sequence of self-awareness contmues mto the adolescent years,with its final two levels emergmg in early andlate adolescence, reroectively Selman's fourthlevel (his first m adolescence) is defined by theself's awareness of its own self-awareness Thisimplies that the young adolescent knows thatone can consciously monitor one's own self-ex-penence Not only does this new awareness ex-plain the mcreased self-consciousness of youngadolescents, commonly observed m the person-ahty development literature ( e g . White 1972)but it also accounts for the increased sense ofpersonal agency that most researchers havefound dunng this age period Because the ado-lescent now knows the possibility of self-reflec-tion, the adolescent conceives of the mmd as anactive processor of expenence and ultimately asa potential manipulator of one's expenence

Damon and Hart 855

This establishes a new mode of self-control gen-erated by one's mental powers of self-reflectiveself-awareness Selman offers the foUowmg ex-ample m response to a question askmg aboutone's reactions to the loss of the puppy m Sel-man's dilemma, a young adolescent might say,"I can fool myself mto not wanting to see an-other puppy if I keep on saying to myself, 'Idon't want a puppy, I don't ever want to seeanother puppy'

Although the adolescent at Selman's fourthlevel generally believes that one has controlover one's thoughts and emotions, there is alsosome awareness that certain mental experienceIS beyond one's volitional reach For example,Selman quotes one young adolescent who said,"If I did something wrong, I really can't forgetabout it because of time I really can't makemyself forget, I wiU always remember it" (p103) But this apparent incongruity with thenotion of self-reflective self-control poses an un-resolvable contradiction to the young adoles-cent, who simply segregates the two irreconcil-able notions of self m disparate, unrelated state-ments Only at level 5, according to Selman,does the older adolescent resolve this problemby constructing the notion of conscious andnonconscious levels of experience (or some par-aUel version of this notion) The level 5 solu-tion IS that there are mental expenences thatcan influence one's actions but which are notavailable for conscious inspection For example,Selman quotes one level 5 response to the ques-tion "Why did Mike say he didn't want to eversee another puppy again^' The adolescent re-plies, "He may not want to admit to himselfthat another dog could take Pepper's place Hemight feel at some level that would be unloyalto Pepper to just go out and replace the dogHe may feel guilty about it He doesn't want toface these feelings, so he says, no dog " (Is heaware of this?) "Probably not" (p 106)

According to Selman, therefore, self-under-standing m adolescence begins with a globalnotion of the "I" as a self-reflective, active con-troller of one's experience, with some uncoordi-nated recognition that there are limits to thisawareness and control Later m adolescenceone develops the notion of two different levelsof mental experience, one conscious and onenonconscious, both of which can influence one'sthoughts and actions In this manner, the adoles-cent conceptuaUy constructs a unified self-sys-tem while still preserving the notion that self-awareness and conscious self-control have theirboundanes

856 Child DevelopmentSelman's self-understanding research is

somewhat limited by his exclusive focus on self-awareness and by his consequent reliance onperspective taking as the "underlying" explana-tion for conceptual development in this areaBroughton's research, more broadly based andmore directly aimed at self-specific issues, re-veals some further trends m adolescent self-understanding development, in addition to rep-licating the basic findings reported by SelmanBroughton, like Selman, proposes two levels ofself-knowledge in adolescence (levels 3 and 4 mBroughton's scheme) Dunng early adolescence,an initial distinction is made between mentaland physical reality According to Broughton,this level 3 distinction has several importantimplications for voung adolescents' self-concep-tions First, the mind, now seen as an entity inits own right, takes on volitional characteristicsindependent of the self's physical activity Forexample, the "I" is seen ds capable of evalu-ating the selfs actions, as m this example fromone of Broughton's teenage subjects "With ourminds we can make our own judgments and dowhat we feel is right" (p 87) Second, theyoung adolescent sees the self as "I" as a stableway of mentally processing information, as acharacteristic mode of knowing the world Oneof Broughton's subjects replied that the self is"the way your thoughts go" (p 88) Third,since the mental functions of self are recog-nized, the "I" IS seen as having complete andpnvate access to its own inner processes The"I" knows itself, and this knowledge neither isshared by anyone else nor extends to othersThat IS, the "I" is seen as totaUy self-aware ina way special to itself as an example, oneyoung adolescent told Broughton, "I know whatI feel about things, and I don't know someoneelse" (p 88)

Although the young adolescent recognizesthe distinction between mental and physicaland bases a new understanding of self on thisrecognition, there is still little appreciation ofthe mental selfs unique qualities Broughtonbeheves that such an appreciation develops latein adolescence, and this development definesBroughton's level 4 The adolescent at thispomt has some understanding of the mentalworld's mtemal system of relations and regula-tions This enables the adolescent to conceiveof the mental self as a system of distinct ele-ments, sometimes operating concordantly andsometimes "divided " For example, Broughtonquotes one adolescent who speaks of two mnermental selves, one of which is "natural" and oneof which "imitates" its ideal (Broughton 1980)

This, writes Broughton, is one typical versionof this reasoning level, since it represents an at-tempt to understand both the complexity andthe unity of the " I " Other examples includeadolescents who introspect about the logicalmechanisms that characterize their thought pro-cesses, posit real and phony mental activities,logical and irrational ones, and so on In laterlevels of Broughton's developmental sequence(levels 5 and 6), Broughton descnbes furtherchanges in individuals' understanding of the"I," but these changes occur dunng adulthoodand are beyond the scope of this review

Broughton's analysis of adolescent self-un-derstandmg converges with Selman's on thefollowing points First, both authors agree thatthe young adolescent views the self m primarilymental terms, as an active processor of experi-ence Both also agree that this conception is as-sociated with the adolescent's new respect forthe volitional powers either in the sense of mon-itoring and manipulating its own thoughts andactions (Selman) or in the sense of evaluatingitself (Broughton) The adolescent tendencytoward self-reflection is thus connected by bothauthors to a new and stronger sense of personalagency Finally, both authors agree that a morereahstic and adequate view of mental processesdevelops later in adolescence Selman andBroughton both believe that this change en-ables the adolescent to understand the unevenand sometimes divided workmgs of mental lifewhile at the same time maintaining a belief mthe unity of the self-system Selman stresses theadolescent's construction of conscious and non-conscious levels of mental expenence, whereasBroughton stresses the adolescent's constructionof such notions as the real mental self versusthe imitative or phony mental self But bothauthors portray trie effects of the change sim-ilarly as a move away from the notion of aglobal mental self with mystenous, unexploredworking to a view of a systematic mental selfconsisting of distinct elements that operate ac-cording to definable laws and regulanties

Secord and Peevers's (1974) study of self-understanding m children and adolescents foundthe same developmental pattems reported bySelman and Broughton The authors used afree-response method of questionmg subjectsand analyzed responses intuitively rather thanwith the aid of a formal codmg scheme, butthe authors' impressionistic account of theirdata not only dovetails nicely with Selman andBroughton's findings but also suggests some fur-ther features of adolescent self-understandmgThe first developmental shift noted by Secord

and Peevers occurs at the begmnmg of adoles-cence At this age, the young adolescent de-scnbes the self m terms of abstractions and gen-eral evaluations, rather than m terms of specificacts and qualities as during childhood Also,Secord and Peevers report that young adoles-cents are likely to describe themselves m termsof their past and future selves, the sense of con-tinuity (an aspect of the "I"), whereas youngerchildren almost invariably describe themselvesin terms of the immediate present

The next shift noted by Secord and Peev-i ers occurs in middle adolescence (as revealed'' by the authors' sample of eleventh graders)Here we see many of the qualities reported bySelman and Broughton, though at a somewhatearlier age (dunng the first of the other tworesearchers' adolescent levels) This discrepancycould result from either differences in researchpopulations or the relative informality andopen-endedness of the Secord-Peevers testingprocedure when compared with the more m-tensively probed interviews of Selman andBroughton In any event, Secord and Peeversfound that their adolescent subjects developednotions of seU-reflectivity, vobtion, and self-evaluation as cntical components of their self-understanding For example, one typical self-reflective statement quoted by the authors was,"I saw myself back in high schooljust like Icould sit back and watch myself go to school"(Secord & Peevers 1974, p 136) As an exam-ple of the awakened sense of adolescent voli-tion, another subject said, "If I don't like a sub-ject, I won't do anything in the subjectand, on the other hand, the subjects 1 do likemy science and mathematicsI really work"(p 139) This, the authors wnte, demonstratesa recognition that inner processes like motiva-tion determine the course of one's life eventsThus, the self is seen as active and self-gen-erating "There is a kind of projection of activ-ities [at this age]self as agent enacting vanousscenes, rather than as a heing with qualities"(p 138) In adolescence, then, the emphasison self-understanding shifts away from the con-stituents of the "Me" and toward the aspectsof the " I " Finally, in another manifestation ofself-reflection and self-determmacy, the self isseen as its own evaluator This, according toSecord and Peevers, takes place mostly onmoral grounds, as in the following example"But I still think that I consider populanty tooimportant above other things more than Ishould I don't like people who talk aboutother people behmd their backs because it's

Damon and Hart 857they wouldn't like it if they were talked about,and I don't think it's nght" (p 138)

A study by Bemstem (1980) elaboratessome of the trends noted by Secord and Peev-ers, particularly the early adolescent trendsnot mentioned by Selman or Broughton Bern-stem asked 10-, 15-, and 20-year-olds threetypes of questions designed to reveal their con-ceptions of the "self-system" The first type ofquestion was directed at differentiation m self-system conceptions A typical question was,"Everyone behaves differently m different situ-ations with different people List all the waysthat you act" The second type of question, di-rected at abstractness in self-system concep-tions, was of the following sort "You havelisted a number of different ways that you actWhat does each of these tell you about your-self ?" The third type of question was aimed atintegration and asked the subject to "Put all ofthis together in a statement about yourself "

Bernstein expected that older subjectswould demonstrate greater differentiation mtheir self-system conceptions than younger sub-jects by making statements from a Ijirger num-ber of self categories This expectation was un-confirmed But Bernstein did find an age-relateddifference in the types of categones that sub-jects used Children at age 10 were likely torefer to situational, behavioral, and emotionalaspects of self (e g, "I play at the playground","I hit my brother", "I get mad at my mother",as respective examples of statements from situ-ational, behavioral, and emotional categories)Adolescents at ages 15 and 20 were likely torefer to their social personality charactenstics,their beliefs, and their acceptance of socialrules, as m, respectively, "I am really fnendly,so I can make new friends easily", "I thinkbeing a good sport is important, so if we losea game, I am never a spoilsport", "My motherthinks that it is wrong to cheat, so I don't"

As for abstraction m self-system concep-tions, Bernstein reports that his youngest sub-jects generally were quite concrete, linking theself to direct action m most of their statements( eg , "I mow the lawn at home") Subjects inmid-adolescence linked together a vanety ofself-actions according to one common theme,thus demonstrating an initial abstracting fromself-system charactenstics, an example mightbe, "Going to the dnve-m with my friends isjust something I do with them, like I also playbasketball with them " In his oldest subjects,Bernstein found some abstracting on the basisof "an underlymg dimension which provides m-

858 Child Development

temal consistency for behaviors which appeardiscrepant" (p 237) For example, a 20-year-old might say, "I help my brother with hishomework, but I don't help my sister with hersbecause my brother really needs the help, whilemy sister is lazy I mean it's fair to help himand not her "

Bemstem found a similar developmentaltrend m adolescent tendencies toward concep-tual mtegration of the self-system Integratingstatements of 10-year-olds were generally con-fined to a simple reiteration of previous self-definitions, without recognibon of possible con-tradiction m diverse definitions By mid-adoles-cence, diversity of self-definition is recognized,but no coordinating pnnciple between discrep-ant elements is yet constructed For example,one such response might be, "WeD, when I amaround my fnends, I am really talkative andanimated, but just around my family I sort ofkeep to myself It's sort of hke I am two diflFer-ent people, I don't know why " By the end ofadolescence, accordmg to Bemstem, integratingprmciples that recognize diversity yet maintainthe coherence of the self-system are found Anexample of an amended version of the abovestatement might be, "When I am around myfriends, I am really talkative because I feel hkethey are treatmg me hke a person who hassomething mteresting and important to say Myfamily doesn't bsten to what I say, so I justdon't feel like talking to hear myself speak"The pnnciple that coordinates here betweenthe two contradictory self-statements (talkative-ness and silence) is the self's desire to engagem meanmgful communication when talking

Like the research summanzed above, Bem-stem's work shows the adolescent transitionfrom action-based conceptions of self to concep-tions based on psychological charactenstics,such as behefs Bernstein's research also tapsmto the divided self of adolescence as por-trayed by Broughton and, hke Broughton andSehnan, shows how older adolescents resolvethe contradicbons of this division by construct-ing conceptual prmciples that coordinate thevanous features of self mto a coherent systemLike Secord and Peevers, Bemstem stresses theadolescent tendency toward abstracbon aroundstable, unifymg qualities of self One such qual-ity that emerges as pnmary m Bernstein's workIS the sociai personality aspect of self Bemstemshows how trie young adolescent moves from adefinition of the "Me" in terms of transient ac-bons and emobons to a definibon of the "Me"m terms of stable personality traits with sociailmphcabons When, m later adolescence, the

notion of stable personahty becomes combinedwith the nobon of characteristic behef systems,the adolescent is able to establish an under-standing of self that is self-refiecbve, complex,and systematic

Two studies askmg children and adoles-cents for their free descnptions of themselveshave uncovered many of the same age trendsreported by Bemstem and others The first, byMontemayor and Eisen (1977), used Gordonsself-concept coding system (Gordon 1968) toanalyze the free self-descnpbons of subjectsbetween the ages of 9 and 18 The researchersfound that, with age, adolescents more fre-quently used the following categones from Gor-don's system in their self-descnpbons (theproporbonal frequencies of youngest subjectsversus oldest who used each of the followmg cat-egories at least once are given in parentheses)ideological behefs (4%-39%), interpersonal style(42X-912), psychic style (27*-72), existen-tial individuating (0^-542), sense of self-deter-mination (5%492), and sense of unity (0%-21^) Although the nommal labels of GJordon'scategones differ somewhat from the languageother authors have used, the concordance of re-sults becomes apparent when we translate "exis-tenbal" mto "seff-refiecbve," "sense of self-de-termination" into "sense of volition (or personalagency)," "interpersonal style" into "sociai per-sonahty charactensbcs," and "psychic style"into "manner of mentally processmg experi-ence"all aspects of the sense of "I ' Also maccord with other studies, Montemayor andEisen found that with age adolescents use thefollowing categones less frequently temtonal-lty-cibzenship ill%-8%), possessions ( 5 0 ^8%), and boidy image (87*-16%) The otherfree-response study of children and adolescents'self-descnpbons was a similar, though less com-prehensive, effort by Livesly and Bromley(1973) Age trends for categones like gen-eral personality attnbutes and beliefs, atbtudes,and values were compabble with the findmgsof Montemayor and Eisen regardmg similarcategones

It IS noteworthy that even studies primar-ily focusmg on self-esteem have tapped essen-bally ldenbcal developmental pattems m ado-lescent self-understandmg Rosenberg's broad-based senes of studies into self-concept includedthree components relevant to the issue m thisreview (Rosenberg 1979) In Rosenberg's mves-tigabon tappmg most directly mto the develop-ment of seff-understanding, he asked subjectsaged 8 through 18 quesbons on the followingareas of concem points of pnde and shame m

.>

Damon and Hart 859self ("Gould you tell me what thmgs are reallybest about you?" "Do you have any weakpoints, that is, any thmgs not as good aboutyou?"), sense of distmctiveness and commonal-ity ("In what ways are you different frmn mostother kids you knowf*" "In what ways are youthe same?"), and ideal self ("What land of per-son would you like to be when you grow upr")Rosenberg found that, m response to thesequesbons, children generally descnbe the con-stituents of the "Me" in terms of physical andactive qualities, whereas adolescents refer topsychological aspects of the "Me " In addition,Rosenberg reports the rismg importance of theselfs social personality charactenstics dunngadolescence When questioned about pomts ofpnde, 9% of the 8-year-olds' responses were in-terpersonal traits (e g , friendly, shy) while 17*of the 14-year-olds' and 28% of the 16-year-olds'responses were interpersonal traits When askedabout the person the subject would like to be-come, 36% of the 8-year-olds' responses wereinterpersonal traits, while 69% of the 14-16-year-olds' responses were interpersonal traitsFinally, Rosenberg found that the selfs abilityto control itself becomes much more prommentdunng adolescence When questioned aboutpoints of shame, only 14% of the 8-year-olds'reroonses were general traits reflecting self-con-trol, while 32% of the 14-16-year-olds' re-sponses were these kmds of general traits

In a second aspect of his study, Rosenberginvesbgated the locus of both "mterior" and"exterior" self-knowledge, that is, who knowsthe self best The exterior self was operation-alized as attitudes about intelligence, morality,and aesthebcs for example, "If I asked youand your mother how smart you were, and yousaid one thing and she said another, who wouldbe nght^you, or your mother?" A correspond-ing question for the interior self probed emo-tions and feelmgs in the followmg way "Nowwho knows best what kind of person you reallyare deep down msideyour mother, your fa-ther, yourself, or your best friend?"

Rosenberg found that locus of self-knowl-edge shifts, with age, from the other, especiallythe parent, to the self Goncemmg the extenorself, Rosenberg reports, "Almost half of theolder children, but less than one-sixth of the

, younger children, placed the locus of extenorself-knowledge within the self' (Rosenberg1979, pp 243-244) Locus of mtenor self-knowledge followed a similar trend about halfof the younger children thought the parentknew the child better than did the child, whileonly 36% of the 12-14-year-olds beLeved the

parent knew one better than did oneself Thesefindings, of course, agree with Broughton's de-scription of the consequences of the distmcbonbetween mental and physical Once the mentalIS seen to be unique, according to Broughton,the self IS seen to be a privileged and omni-scient processor of the selfs expenence, leadmgto an awareness that no one can ever imder-stand one's expenence as fully as can oneself

Conclusion: A Model of Self-Understanding Developmentfrom Infancy to Adolescence

Our summary of research findings on self-understanding from infancy through adoles-cence reveals some widely replicated ontoge-netic pattems, such as (1) the shift from phys-lcahstic to psychological self-conceptions, (2)the emergence of stable sociai personality char-acterizations of self, (3) the increasingly voli-tional and self-reflective nature of self-under-standmg, and (4) the tendency toward theconceptual integration of diverse aspects of selfinto a unified self-system Some of these trendsare m line with general cognitive changes thathave been documented for this age period Forexample, the physical-psychological shift canbe seen as another example of the "surface todepth" trend that Flavell and others have noted(Flavell 1977, Higgms, Ruble, & Hartup, mpress) Similarly, the systematizabon of self canbe seen as another example of the formalizationof reasoning dunng adolescence (Inhelder &Piaget 1958, Keating 1975)

Nevertheless, we would resist the tempta-tion to reduce a developmental account of self-understanding to a list of changes along a fewgeneral cognitive dimensions Such an accountwould not only fail to capture the substance ofself-understanding development but would alsounderrepresent the complexity of the ontoge-netic pattems For example, neither the phys-ical to psychological nor the more general sur-face to depth notions define the developmentalsequence in a totally accurate way This is be-cause (1) there is much in early self-under-standing that does not meet the cntenon ofphysicalisbc, and (2) there is much m advancedself-understanding that does not meet the cri-teria of psychological As examples of the firstpoint very young children express self-concep-tions that are primarily active rather than phys-ical, and they sometimes also make self-state-ments that are sociai (eg , group membership)and even psychological ( eg , emobonal states)As an example of the second point the physical.

860 Child Development

social, and acbve self aU remam important tomost mdividuals throughout life, long after theyare capable of predominantly psychological self-concepbons In fact, psychologists have longnoted that the physical self, after a period ofrelabve neglect, once again waxes in signif-icance for a person's self-concept at the endof adolescence (Freud 1922, Kohlberg & Gil-figan 1971)

The solubon to such complexity, we be-lieve, IS to abandon the attempt to analyze self-understanding development along a number ofunrelated, unilateral dimensions and, rather, toposit a systemabc developmental model mwhich changes along mulbple dimensions areshown to mteract with one another m thecourse of ontogenesis Such a model of self-understanding development from infancy toadolescence is schemabzed in figure 1

The logic of the model is as follows Thefront face of the cube represents the self-as-object (James's "Me") divided into its fourbasic constituents (the physical, active, social,and psychological self) At all ages, childrenhave some knowledge of each of these four con-sbtuent self-schemes, however cursory andpnmibve this knowledge may be In the courseof development, knowledge of each self-schemechanges m character These changes are repre-sented along the vertical dimensions (the col-

umns of the model's front face) These develop-mental changes are the trends descnbed in thisreview Withm the 16 boxes of the model'sfront face, we have offered abbreviated descnp-tions of these main developmental trends

In addition to these vertical developmentaltrends within each of the four self-schemes,there is another important ontogenetic trend mchildren's understanding of the self-as-objectThis IS an age-related shift that favors, respec-tively, the physical, active, social, and then psy-chological aspects of self as the child becomesthe adolescent This movement is representedalong the darkly outlined diagonal boxes of themodel's front face It is this movement that hasseen the focus of previous unidimensional ac-counts of self-concept development Althoughwe believe that these previous accounts haveerred m their too exclusive focus on this oneontogenetic movement, we do beheve that it isa dommant dimension within a multidimen-sional developmental progression For this rea-son this movement occupies the central posibonon the front face of our model The four boxesalong the darkened diagonal represent the pro-totypical concepbons of self at each of the fourgeneral self-understanding levels (rows 1, 2, 3,and 4 along the front face)

As for these four self-understanding levels.

INFANCr SEARLTCKJLOHOOO

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTESREFlECTIdG VOLITIOHAL CHOICES OHPERSONAL 1 MORALSTAOOAROS

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTESTHAT INFLUEKCE SOCIAl APPEAL 1 SOCIAl INTERACTIONS

800ILY PROPEOR MATERIALPOSSESSIONS

ACTIVE ATTRIBUTESTHAT REFLECTCHOICES PERSONALOR MORAL STANDAROS

ACTIVE ATTRIBUTESTHAT INFLUENCE SOCIAL APPEAL t SOCIAL INTERACTIONS

MORAL OR PERSONALCHOICES CONCERNINGSOCIAL RELATIONS ORSOCIAL PERSONALITYCHARACTERISTICS

HCTIVITIES THAT ARECONSIDERED WITH REfEBEHCE TO REACTIONS(APPHOVAt OR DISftPPROVAL) OF OTHERS

FACT OF MEMBERSHIPIN PARTICULAR SOCIAL RELATIONS OROROUPS

BELIEF SYSTEMSPERSONAL PHILOSOPHTSELF S OHH THDUSHTPROCESSES

SOCIAL SENSITIVITYCOMMUNICATIVE CORPETENCE I OTHERPSYCHOLOGICALLY RELATED SOCIAL SKILLS

KN0ULE06E LEARNEDSKILLS MOTIVATIONOR ACTIVITY REL*TEOEMOTIONAL STATES

MOMENTARY MOOOSFEELINGS PREFERENCES S AVERSIONS

FIG 1 Conceptual foundations of the "Me" (physical, active, social, and psychological self-constit-uents) and the "I (conbnuity, distinctness, vohbon, and self-reflection) at four developmental levelsdunng childhood and adolescence

Damon and Hart 861they are represented by the model's horizontaldimensions (the rows), cutbng across each ofthe four constituent self-schemes These over-all levels consist of general features that theparallel developmental levels of the four self-schemes have m common In other words, thefour aspects of self-knowledge are Imked ateach developmental level because they sharecharacteristics deriving from the dominant con-ception of self at that level This dominant con-ception at each level is, as noted above, sho