Abstract

Distinct layers of awareness about objects, people, and the self grow from an implicit biologically given core at birth. Each added layer of subjective experience would correspond to major qualitative shifts: the emergence of a contemplative stance by 2 months, self- consciousness from around 21 months and the manifestation of an ethical stance by 3–5 years. This new “onion” way of looking at psy- chological experience is meant to capture the fact that a new emerging layer of awareness does not block, re-construct, or fun- damentally re-structure “à la Piaget” the expression of those ontogenetically anterior via bounding up equilibration and other re- flective abstraction “bootstrapping” mechanisms. In contrast to Piaget’s overall representational re-organization, what is pro- posed here with the onion metaphor model is a multilayer view on consciousness in development, each layer offering a particular zone of awareness through which we constantly navigate depending on the mind state of our being in the world: dozing and dreaming, im- plicitly or explicitly aware, co-aware, conscious, or co-conscious. The model is illustrated using facts on the early development of picto- rial understanding, mirror self-experience, self-consciousness, interpersonal awareness, and sharing awareness in development. The main purpose of the theory is to show that what develop in chil- dren between birth and 5 years are ultimately additional ranges of subjective experience, new possibilities of being aware in the world.