Research Assistant: The Emergence of Consciousness in Early Infant Development

Introduction to the topic

How does a child become a self-aware person who can think about “me”? This is one of the big unanswered questions spanning philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, with relevance both for disorders of consciousness and for artificial intelligence. Recent work suggests that a concept of self gradually emerges over the first two years of life and profoundly reshapes how children remember, learn and understand perspectives.

Project details

In this project, we investigate how the infant brain exploits internal signals, like the heartbeat, and how these signals are modulated by the way in which caregivers typically interact with their infants through communicative cues like eye-contact.

To test this account, we run behavioural and neurophysiological studies with 3–18-month-old infants. Methods include eye-tracking, pupillometry, EEG/ECG and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while infants watch visual animations linked to their heartbeat, hear their own name, or engage in eye contact with a caregiver. We also relate these early measures to later markers of self-representation such as mirror self-recognition and self-biased memory.

Together, these studies aim to provide the first mechanistic account of how everyday social interactions and internal sensations interact to give rise to a self-awareness by the second year of life, opening a new empirical window on the development of human consciousness.

Within this large ongoing project, students can take part in embedded research projects and will be involved in collecting different types of data in the lab, as well as coding and analyzing data. Students can discuss with the mentor which aspects interest them most.

In addition to producing a final report, there may be opportunities to contribute to a manuscript for publication, depending on project progress as well as the student’s level of contribution. This project is suitable for both 10 and 20 hours a week, with the latter having more opportunities for being involved in data collection and research life in the lab.

Selected relevant publications:

• Grosse Wiesmann, C., Rothmaler, K., Habdank, K., Hasan, E., Yang, C., Yeung, E., & Southgate, V. (2025). From other-reference to self-reference: a reversal of the classic memory bias in human infants. Nature Communications, 16:1, 6311.
• Southgate, V. (2024). The origins and emergence of self-representation. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-devpsych-120621-025747
• Southgate, V. (2020). Are infants altercentric? The other and the self in early social cognition. Psychological Review, 127(4), 505-523. DOI: 10.1037/rev0000182

Prerequisite

Knowledge of developmental psychology and/or cognitive science would be an advantage. Experience and/or confidence working with young children is essential. All our participant testing and communication can be done in English.

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