Monday, June 24, 2019

Self Awareness

The ability to see oneself as separate from others is known as self awareness. The mark and mirror task was created to determine which animals also have self awareness, just as humans do. This task consists of marking the test subject, who is unaware, on the face with either paint or makeup. Then the test subject is given access to a mirror, next the test subjects reaction is monitored. If the test subject touches the mark that was made on their face or shows other uses for the mirror, the test subject is most likely known to have self awareness. However, if the test subject reacts to the presence of the mirror as a separate individual, they most likely do not have self awareness. An example of this in babies is when they look at a mirror and say "baby!", this shows that the child does not understand that it is in fact themselves that they see and not a different baby.

3 comments:

  1. Nice post! I found the mark and mirror task to be interesting as well. I attached a cute interesting video of a cat doing the same. The cat is self aware of herself because she even touches her ears then looks down at her paws!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akE2Sgg8hI8

    ReplyDelete
  2. This reminds me of the quote "Cogito, ergo sum" which means "I think, therefore I am." So this leads me to question do we realize and are conscious of our self awareness.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I have always been more of a Freudian, where our self awareness comes from our subconscious. But my feelings may be swayed now from this experiment!

    ReplyDelete