Think babies don't know what's going on? Study finds they can tell the difference between their bodies and other people's.

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Babies are born with self-awareness which allows them to differentiate their bodies from other people’s, new research suggests.
The researchers believe this discovery could help them to understand atypical development in some infants, such as those that go on to develop autism.
PhD student Maria Laura Filippetti, at Birkbeck College, in London, said: ‘The identification of these mechanisms at birth in the current study sheds light on the typical trajectory of body awareness across development.

Babies are born with self-awareness which allows them to differentiate their bodies from other people's, new research suggests

‘Our findings may also be relevant to the investigation of early predictors of developmental disorders in infants, such as autism, where an impairment in the discrimination of self/other is believed to be present.’
Previous studies of adults showed that the integration of information from different senses is an important part of body awareness.
If a person watches another person's face being touched while their own face is being touched, their perception of self shifts.
This means people can be persuaded that a rubber face is their own face if they see it being stroked while their own face is also being stroked.

The researchers believe this discovery could help them to understand atypical development in some infants, such as those that go on to develop autism

The new study aimed to apply the same theory to newborn babies.
Researchers showed 20 healthy newborns, between the ages of 12 hours and four days old, a video of another baby's face being touched with a soft paintbrush.

They then touched the faces of the babies watching the screens.
The study found that the babies showed greater interest in looking at the other baby's face when their own face was being stroked.
Researchers also discovered that the babies were less interested when the face was shown upside down, as they found it less relatable to themselves.
The paper, published in Current Biology, said new born babies are ‘competent creatures’, and that they are ‘capable of differentiating themselves from others and forming a coherent perception of their own bodies’.
Scientists believe that conditions such as autism are characterised by a lack of self-awareness, and that further research in this area may be useful.
‘For years, research on autism has focused on the impairment in social interactions,’ said Ms Filippetti.
‘We believe it will be important for further studies to specifically investigate the perception of the self in this population, as well as the relationship of self to other.’

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