The Development of Bodily Self-Awareness in Young Children

描述(由申请人提供)：正如NICHD战略计划的标题所示，从细胞到自我，自我理解代表着个人发展的顶峰，是充分发挥作用的成年人的必要组成部分。这项拟议的研究确定了早期自我理解的一个独特的、理论上重要的、但很少被研究的方面，即身体自我意识。它的目的是定义和研究幼儿对自己身体的客观表征的发展，从而为以后探讨早期身体概念及其后遗症的相关性和决定因素奠定基础。形成稳定、连贯的身体概念是一项重要的发展任务，为健康的身体形象奠定基础。在青少年和成年人中，身体形象与心理社会功能的其他重要方面有关，包括自尊、个人认同感和人际关系，以及肥胖和饮食失调等问题。然而，身体概念的起源和儿童早期身体形象的发展，以及与身体概念紊乱的相关危险因素，人们几乎不了解。建议的研究建立在一个概念框架上，该框架整合了婴儿发育和成人神经心理学的经验和理论文献，将身体自我意识概念化为客观自我意识的一个独特组成部分，出现在生命的第二年，包括几个潜在的可分离的维度。具体地说，它假设幼儿沿着两个可分离的维度发展对自己身体的客观表征：1)作为相对于世界上其他物体的物体，具有高度、宽度和质量等属性；以及2)作为其身体部位相对于彼此和整体的地形或空间表征。本项目将通过一系列横断面研究，确定18至36个月龄身体自我意识各假设维度的发展过程，以及每个维度与自我认识发展的其他指标(包括自我认识和自我参照)的关系。更好地了解客观自我意识的早期发展将有助于儿童社会和社会认知发展的多个方面的理论和研究。 尽管长期以来人们对儿童身体形象和自我理解的发展很感兴趣，但关于儿童身体形象的起源和早期发展的研究很少。这项拟议的研究旨在增加对儿童对自己身体的客观表征的早期发展的了解。形成稳定、连贯的身体概念是一项重要的发展任务，为健康的身体形象奠定基础。随着越来越多的证据表明，儿童肥胖会带来自尊、社会功能和心理调整的代价，这在一定程度上是由身体形象所调节的，而身体形象障碍也会带来类似的代价，表现为厌食症等疾病，因此迫切需要了解身体形象的发育根源。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As suggested by the title of the NICHD Strategic Plan, From Cells to Selves, self-understanding represents the pinnacle of individual human development and is a necessary component of the fully functional adult human being. The proposed research identifies a unique and theoretically important, but little examined aspect of early self-understanding, body self-awareness. It aims to define and study developments in young children's objective representations of their own bodies, thereby setting the stage for later inquiry into the correlates and determinants of early body concepts and their sequelae. Formation of a stable, coherent body concept is an important developmental task that lays the foundation for a healthy body image. In adolescents and adults the body image is related to other important aspects of psychosocial functioning, including self-esteem, personal identity, and interpersonal relationships, as well as problems such as obesity and eating disorders. However, the origins of body concepts and early childhood developments in body image and associated risk factors for disordered body concepts are little understood. The proposed studies are built on a conceptual framework that integrates empirical and theoretical literatures across infant development and adult neuropsychology to conceptualize body self-awareness as a distinct component of objective self-awareness, emerging in the second year of life and comprising several potentially dissociable dimensions. Specifically, it is hypothesized that young children develop an objective representation of their own bodies along two separable dimensions: 1) as an object in relation to other objects in the world, with attributes such as height, width, and mass; and 2) as a topographic or spatial representation of their body parts in relation to one another and to the whole. This project will identify the developmental course of each hypothesized dimension of body self-awareness between 18 and 36 months of age in a series of cross-sectional studies, as well relations of each with other indices of developing self-knowledge, including self-recognition and self-reference. Better understanding of early developments in objective self-awareness will contribute to theory and research in multiple aspects of children's social and social-cognitive development. Despite longstanding interest in the development of children's body image and self-understanding, there is very little work concerning its origins and early development. The proposed research aims to increase understanding of the early development of children's objective representations of their own bodies. Formation of a stable, coherent body concept is an important developmental task that lays for the foundation for a healthy body image. With growing evidence of the costs to self-esteem, social functioning, and psychological adjustment of childhood obesity, which is partly mediated by body image, and similar costs of body-image disturbances manifested in disorders like anorexia, knowledge about the developmental roots of the body image is sorely needed.