Detection of intermodal proprioceptive-visual contingency as a potential basis of self-perception in infancy

Five-month-old infants can detect the invariant relationship between their own leg motion and a video display of that motion. In three experiments they discriminated between a perfectly contingent live display of their own leg motion and a noncon-tingent display of self or a peer. They showed this discrimination by preferential fixation of the noncontingent display. This effect was evident even when the infant's direct view of his or her own body was occluded, eliminating video image discrim-ination on the basis of an intramodal visual comparison between the sight of self-motion and the video display of that motion. These findings suggest hat the con-tingency provided by a live display of one's body motion is perceived by detecting the invariant intermodal relationship between proprioceptive information for motion and the visual display of that motion. The detection of these relations may be fun-damental to the development of self-perception in infancy. In addition, though 3-month-olds did not show significant discrimination of the contingent and noncon-tingent displays, they did show significantly more extreme looking proportions to the two displays than did the 5-month-olds. This may reflect the infant's progression from self to social orientation. Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) found that by the end of the first year of life, infants are able to discriminate a "live " video image of the self from a recorded image of the self or a peer. The authors propose that this self-rec-ognition is primarily based on the detection of contingent visual stimulation from the live video image. That is, movement of the infant's hand, for example, results in comparable movement of the hand in the video image. Furthermore, they propose that the earliest stages of self-perception are probably based on the infant's detection of some form of respons