The theory I choose to do is self-awareness theory. At about eighteen months of age, toddlers develop a more sophisticated sense of self that is marked by self-recognition and the emergence of self conscious emotions, such as shame, pride, and embarrassment. One common used example is a toddler is placed in front of a mirror and then the parent wipes something on the child's nose before moving the child back to the mirror. Although children eighteen months are not likely to show signs of embarrassment at the mess on their nose, children between eighteen and twenty-four months do. Self-awareness makes possible a more sophisticated understanding of the self and brings about new levels of emotional development. After reading this article I did the same experiment on my 2 year old neece Rose. We put some schmuts on her nose and placed her in front of the mirror. At first she didn’t mind to much, so we put a bigger dot on her nose, placed her in front of the mirror, and she began to cry. She turned real red, and began trying to wipe it off. Once she got it off she went back to smiling, and playing with her toys. Rose just witnessed a stage of self- reconnition. So we then did another experiment to see how self reconigtion worked. This time we found a old video of Rose when she was only a few months old. We showed her the video, and she noticed in the video that she had a mess on her shirt. So she looked at the shirt she was wearing to see if there was still a mess. Of course there wasn’t, but Rose just demonstrated again how self-recognition works. She began to show the emotion of confusion. These experiments gave me a better understanding on how self-awareness/recognition work.
Self awareness develops as infants and toddlers start to relaize that their own actions cause objects and people to react in predictable ways. In credit of this idea, babies whose parents encourage exploration and respond sensitively to their