The Behavioral Signatures of Consciousness in the Pre-Verbal Infant: Reading Which Function Each Reflects

Detecting consciousness in pre-verbal infants currently relies on behavioral and neural markers carried over from adult studies, but no single marker reliably translates to infancy. This paper proposes a map linking an infant's behavior to the specific function of consciousness it reflects, based on a four-loop architecture where consciousness consists of four functions operating in a fixed cycle: admitting a signal, holding it against memory, registering deviation from expectation, and acting on the result while setting the next expectation. Each function leaves a behavioral signature detectable without report, such as surprise indicating a violated expectation. The paper develops assays to read each function separately on controlled content and predicts a developmental order of these signatures as their neural substrates mature.

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Abstract

Detecting consciousness in the pre-verbal infant rests on markers, neural and behavioral signatures carried over from adult studies, and no single marker has been shown to translate reliably to infancy (Passos-Ferreira, 2024; Frohlich & Bayne, 2025). This paper supplies what the marker approach lacks: a map from an infant's behavior to the specific function of consciousness it reflects, so that a response reads as a particular function operating on particular content rather than as an undifferentiated sign. The map is drawn from the four-loop architecture of consciousness, on which consciousness is the unified operation of four functions, each implemented by a distinct neural loop, constituting a processing cycle within a bounded temporal window, in a fixed order: admitting a signal, holding the signal against the stored memory trace, registering the signal's deviation from what was expected, and acting on the result while setting the expectation the next admission will inherit (Stewart, 2026a, 2026c). The architecture is constitutive: it treats these functions as constituting consciousness rather than correlating with it, and treats consciousness as graded with their operation. On those two properties, because each function is a constituent of consciousness rather than a correlate of it, detecting that the function is operating detects the part of consciousness that function constitutes. Each function leaves a behavioral signature that needs no report: an infant who is surprised held an expectation to be violated, and an infant who anticipates held an expectation to be met. The paper develops assays that read one function at a time on controlled content, each built so the response splits that function from the confound that would mimic it. They are a graded-change assay separating memory-trace updating from raw novelty (a large deviation read against a held trace), a held-content assay separating a matched stored structure from a conditioned cue, an anticipation assay and a timing-violation assay separating a held expectation from a reaction to the present stimulus, and an admission assay separating selective attention from a reflex outside it. The behavioral assays read whether a function is expressed; a second channel measures it directly at its neural substrate, through whether the operation is occurring and the synchronization signature the account specifies. The architecture is taken as given. The read identifies which functions are operating, on what content, at a given point. Whether all four outputs converge within the window is itself a measurable property the read delivers. Beyond the read, the paper commits to a developmental ordering the marker approach cannot make: the four signatures are predicted to reach reliable graded form in the order their substrates mature, with the sign-sensitive deviation signature last, an order that holds across two independent pairs and produces a directional dissociation readable at a single point in development. **Keywords:** infant consciousness, markers of consciousness, neural correlates of consciousness, violation of expectation, mismatch response, developmental neuroscience, recognition memory, thalamocortical loops, infant cognition