9 Development of Conscious Control and Imagination Stephanie

Although students of the topic of consciousness can debate its proper definition, most theories tend to take as their starting point what is best characterized as the end point of consciousness, that is, the adult (human) state. This appears to be the case whether consciousness is viewed primarily in terms of neural architecture (a biological approach) or firstperson experience (a phenomenological approach). Even an evolutionary or comparative approach, which considers changes in consciousness on a grand timescale, takes for granted that the human endowment of consciousness is fully fledged and distinguishes ‘‘it’’ from the consciousness of our predecessors or other species. Those who subscribe to these approaches do not necessarily view consciousness as a fundamentally developmental achievement in ontogeny. As noted by Zelazo, Gao, and Todd (2007), differences between younger and older individuals are often assumed to reflect differences in the contents of children’s consciousness, not in the nature of consciousness itself. My aims in this chapter are twofold, and at first blush contradictory. The first is to argue that conscious process develops dramatically in infancy and early childhood and is exercised via increases in reflection (a sense of volition) and top-down control of action, thought, and emotion (executive function, EF). However, the second claim is that development in the case of consciousness is not strictly an upward-bound process in achieving an objective sense of self (i.e., the more choice and control, the better), but rather can be characterized as a balance between objectivity and personal, tacit