Infants at eighteen months recognize their own images in pictures or mirrors, respond with personal pronouns, and exhibit self-awareness in organization of cognitive tasks. Emde argues for a view of self as process, referring to synthetic functions that predate cognitive self-awareness (the representational self) and continue to develop throughout life. He cites three biological principles that organize early development and are fundamental attributes of all later versions of the self: self-regulation (beginning with the neonate's regulation of state), social-fittedness (self-definition developing in a social matrix and inaugurated during mother-infant eye-to-eye interaction), and affective monitoring between mother and child. Current research points to the centrality of affective experience within an interactive matrix; organization of this experience forms a core experience of self. Perception by the child of the social situation and the caretaker's emotional availability are of great importance; by fifteen months, infants should exhibit a long-developed and coherent affective self.