The Innate Experience of Self-Agency

Research is presented showing that an implicit sense of self-agency is probably developing from birth, and possibly even before that. These time points are months before the child begins to manifest explicit (conceptual) self-knowledge, an event that is reported to occur typically in the second year. Implicit self-knowledge in infancy, including the sense of self-agency, is rooted in intermodal perception and action. This chapter proposes a particular role for embodied synesthesia involving proprioception—the modality of self-perception par excellence. From around 6 weeks postpartum, infants show signs of increasingly systematic and deliberate exploration of their own body, and in particular the perceptual consequences of self-produced actions. Infants have expectations regarding such consequences, getting much pleasure when they are met, experiencing displeasure and frustration when they are not. The pleasures of control associated with self-agency would form the affective core and driving motivational force behind mental development from the outset.