Children's understanding of photo self-representations (delayed self-recognition)

Abstract

This study is a replication of "Young Children's Understanding of Photo Self Representations'' by Skouteris and Robson (2006). It is a quantitative experiment involving 24 children aged 2.5 and twenty four 3-year-olds. The experiment involves playing a game with the children during which a sticker will be placed on their forehead without the children noticing. This sticker will only be visible to the children when a photograph is taken. What is to be investigated is which age group will use the photo as an aid to remove the sticker from their forehead, whether pre-test training can help the children's problem-solving. This test is referred to as the delayed self-recognition test as it investigates children's ability to recognize themselves in a delayed medium (photograph). The results of the current study show that training seems to have no significant relationship with whether the children reach up to their forehead for the sticker (p-value of0.562 > 0.050 level of significance), and that only 3- year-olds reliably pass this test (p-value of0.020 < 0.050 level of significance). The latter finding is congruent with Skouteris and Robson whilst the former result contradicts these findings. Apart from replicating the work of these researchers, this study also offers proposals tor future work by illustrating the importance of self-recognition as a means for screening for child development gone awry.