Is Mirror Test Still a Reliable Way to Investigate Self-awareness in Animals?

DOI

10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.176How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Animal behavior; Animal cognition; Self-awareness; Mirror test

Abstract

To find one simple, comprehensive definition of animal cognition has been a challenging question. The existence of self-awareness in animals can be one piece of evidence to prove the existence of animal cognition. In the paper, the author reviewed the criteria of the mirror test which has been widely used to examine self-awareness in animals and the animals that pass or do not pass the mirror test by reviewing and comparing papers using mirror test to study animal self-awareness. The author also discussed some weaknesses of the mirror test and possible ways one can innovate. As the mirror test can confuse when applied to animals that have complex social behavior, there is a need for innovations for the mirror test. The mirror test, a practice in psychology since the early 1970s, is used to determine whether an animal or young human child is naturally self-aware when looking at a reflection in a mirror. The idea of using mirrors to measure self-awareness was based on an experiment by Charles Darwin when he used them in zoos to observe the reactions of orangutans.

Copyright

© 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jiaqi Wang
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/04/29
TI  - Is Mirror Test Still a Reliable Way to Investigate Self-awareness in Animals?
BT  - Proceedings of the 2022 7th International Conference on Social Sciences and Economic Development (ICSSED 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 1049
EP  - 1052
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.176
DO  - 10.2991/aebmr.k.220405.176
ID  - Wang2022
ER  -