ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dev. Psychol.
Sec. Cognitive Development
Mirror Self-Recognition in ni-Vanuatu Toddlers: Developmental Trajectory and Cultural Validity
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
- 2Universitat Leipzig Institut fur Psychologie, Leipzig, Germany
- 3Simon Fraser University Department of Psychology, Burnaby, Canada
- 4Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max-Planck-Institut fur evolutionare Anthropologie, Leipzig, Germany
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A key milestone in children's development of a self-concept is mirror self-recognition: realizing that their body matches the reflected image. Cross-cultural research has raised questions about both the developmental timing of this milestone and the validity of the mirror-mark test across diverse cultural contexts. Here, we document a developmental trajectory of mirror self-recognition in a rural horticulturalist community from Vanuatu (N= 56; age range: 17–36 months). In addition to the standard mirror-mark test, we included a leg-mark control test and assessed engagement with the mirror to examine task-specific challenges linked to limited mirror exposure. Moreover, we assessed convergent behavioral indicators of objective self-awareness (embarrassment and grooming) spontaneously shown in front of the mirror. Overall, 29% of children passed the mirror-mark test, with success rates increasing with age and the majority passing by the end of their third year (youngest passer: 24 months). Unlike previous studies in comparable small-scale communities, which report only low passing rates within the 18–24-month age range, our study demonstrates increasing passing rates beyond 24 months and reveals a clear developmental trajectory that stabilizes by 36 months. Mirror-mark performance correlated positively with both leg-mark performance and the spontaneous embarrassment and grooming. We discuss implications for the cultural validity of the mirror-mark test and emphasize procedural adjustments and convergent validity as keys to capturing developmental variation across cultures.
Keywords: culturalvalidity, Mirror Self-Recognition, Mirror-mark test, Objective self-awareness, Self-conscious emotions, Vanuatu
Received: 22 Aug 2025; Accepted: 26 Jan 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Petrović, Schäfer, MacGillivray and Cebioğlu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ljubica Petrović
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