Part II, The Four Senses of the Self, Chapter 3, The Sense of an Emergent Self Summary and Analysis

At around eight weeks, infants begin to make direct eye-to-eye contact and exhibit other behaviors that creator a social world. Prior to this period, however, how might the infant experience the world? Stern believes that the infant is forming a sense of an emergent self, a sense of organization in the process of formation which will remain active for the rest of life.

A number of revolutions in collecting information have enabled the formation of new experimental paradigms for learning about the clinical infant. They have taught us that infants seek sensory stimulation and have distinct biases or preferences about the sensations they seek, biases or perceptions that are innate. Infants have a...