Cluster Kinds and the Developmental Origins of Consciousness

There’s a clue in the name. ‘Infant’ is derived from the Latin in fans (without speech). Human babies cannot report their experiences and are uncooperative (to say the least) when it comes to experimental task instructions. For these reasons, it has been difficult to establish when babies become conscious. Bayne and colleagues propose a cluster-based methodology for overcoming these issues, arguing that consciousness emerges in the last prenatal trimester [1]. We are heartily enthusiastic about this approach but consider some complications. While Bayne et al. identify behavioural and neural markers of consciousness commensurate with an ‘early emergence’ view, we note that other markers point to a ‘late emergence’ view. In the spirit of optimism, we suggest how the cluster-based methodology may overcome this problem (Box 1).