Young Children’s Understanding of Photo Self-Representations1

This experiment examined delayed self-recognition in 24 2.5-year-old and 24 3-year-old children. Children were marked covertly with a sticker on their forehead while playing a game, after which their photograph was taken. When show this photograph, the 3- but not the 2.5-year-olds reached to remove this sticker reliably. However, the older children reached reliably only when first shown how a recently taken photograph can be used to guide their search for an object in the testing room that was not directly visible to the unaided eye. Implications of the findings in terms of the development of a temporally extended sense of self are discussed