Séminaire Katarina BEGUS

In this talk, I will present new longitudinal evidence connecting early cognitive self-monitoring to the emergence of explicit self-awareness. In a study of 58 infants, 12-month-olds completed an infant-controlled, memory-based decision task, while we recorded their gaze and neural activity (EEG). Infants selected matching cards by gazing at them and visual feedback followed 500 ms after a decision was made, allowing us to measure internal error-monitoring (ERN) before infants received external feedback. The same children were assessed on mirror self-recognition at 18 months. Results show a reliable ERN (33–172 ms post-choice, p = 0.013), indicating infants’ capacity to internally monitor own decision errors. Crucially, ERN magnitude at 12 months predicted mirror self-recognition at 18 months (p = 0.031), correctly classifying 90.9% of later self-recognizers. This relationship was specific to internal error-monitoring, not to feedback processing, and was independent of age and general cognitive abilities. Only infants who later showed self-recognition exhibited ERN and adapted their behavior following errors (more exploration, slower decisions). These findings suggest that explicit self-awareness may build on earlier cognitive-monitoring mechanisms that allow infants to track their own cognitive activity and gradually build a conceptual sense of self."