Mirror self-recognition (MSR) is considered to be the benchmark of objective self-awareness-the ability to think about oneself. Cross-cultural research showed that there are systematic differences in toddlers' MSR abilities between 18 and 24 months. Understanding whether these differences result from systematic variation in early social experiences will help us understand the processes through which objective self-awareness develops. In this study, we examined 57 18- to 22-month-old toddlers (31 girls) and their mothers from two distinct sociocultural contexts: urban Canada (58% of the subsample were Canadian-born native English-speakers) and rural Vanuatu, a small-scale island society located in the South Pacific. We had two main goals: (a) to identify the social-interactional correlates of MSR ability in this cross-cultural sample, and (b) to examine whether differences in passing rates could be attributed to confounding factors. Consistent with previous cross-cultural research, ni-Vanuatu toddlers passed the MSR test at significantly lower rates (7%) compared to their Canadian counterparts (68%). Among a suite of social interactive variables, only mothers' imitation of their toddlers' behavior during a free play session predicted MSR in the entire sample and maternal imitation partially mediated the effects of culture on MSR. In addition, low passing rates among ni-Vanuatu toddlers could not be attributed to reasons unrelated to self-development (i.e., motivation to show mark-directed behavior, understanding mirror-correspondence, representational thinking). This suggests that differences in MSR passing rates reflect true differences in self-recognition, and that parental imitation may have an important role in shaping the construction of visual self-knowledge in toddlers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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解释镜像自我认知中的跨文化变异：对客观自我意识个体发育的新见解。

镜像自我认知（MSR）被认为是客观自我意识的基准——思考自己的能力。跨文化研究表明，18 至 24 个月的幼儿 MSR 能力存在系统差异。了解这些差异是否源于早期社会经历的系统变化将有助于我们了解客观自我意识的发展过程。在这项研究中，我们检查了来自两个不同社会文化背景的 57 名 18 至 22 个月大的幼儿（31 名女孩）及其母亲：加拿大城市（58% 的子样本是加拿大出生的母语为英语的人）和瓦努阿图农村，位于南太平洋的小规模岛屿社会。我们有两个主要目标：(a) 在这个跨文化样本中确定 MSR 能力的社会互动相关性，(b) 检查及格率的差异是否可归因于混杂因素。与之前的跨文化研究一致，瓦努阿图幼儿通过 MSR 测试的比率 (7%) 远低于加拿大同行 (68%)。在一系列社会互动变量中，只有母亲在自由玩耍期间对幼儿行为的模仿预测了整个样本中的 MSR，而母亲的模仿部分介导了文化对 MSR 的影响。此外，ni-Vanuatu 幼儿的低通过率不能归因于与自我发展无关的原因（即表现出标记导向行为的动机、理解镜像对应、代表性思维）。这表明 MSR 通过率的差异反映了自我认知的真实差异，并且父母的模仿可能在塑造幼儿视觉自我知识的构建方面发挥重要作用。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2021 APA，保留所有权利）。