Chapter 3

I find all of the examples of research, provided by Tomasello, to be very persuasive in convincing me that infants do indeed undergo a change at nine months. I also have to admit that I agree that there exists a clear difference between a nonhuman primate's concept of self at the age of nine months and later and a human at the age of nine months and later. The only issue I'm having with this chapter is that I'm unsatisfied with Tomasello's attempts to explain the reason for this abrupt alteration that occurs around the age of nine months. Why nine months? Tomasello himself asks this same question on p. 68 yet, in my opinion, still fails to give me a satisfactory answer. The pessimist in me wants to think that it can be answered by accepting one of the theories dismissed by Tomasello and saying it's just coincidence. Infants have had nine months to observe the world and it just happens that, biologically, it takes about that amount of time to begin imitating others and have the appearance of a concept of self. Tomasello claims there is too much data from research to contradict this simple explanation but I'm not yet convinced.

In response to the sidenote on another post, I believe it was Michelle's, I too have been having issues with Tomasello speaking about his research in third person. I'm glad someone else noticed it.