Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Studying consciousness in prelinguistic infants presents a challenge. We cannot ask them what they experience, and they cannot understand complex task instructions. This chapter offers an optimistic perspective. It outlines and assesses a methodology for studying infant consciousness, based centrally on natural kinds. This picture rests on a simple idea: we should harvest markers of consciousness in adults and then look for those markers in infants. When we find enough of them in an infant, we can infer the presence of consciousness. The chapter fleshes out this simple idea, showing how it can be justified and strengthened using the machinery of natural kinds. The chapter contrasts this approach with a ‘theory-first’ approach and argues that natural kinds are better. The chapter also discusses some complications, including behavioural versus neuroscientific markers of consciousness, the problem that there are no uncontroversial markers of consciousness, how to detect and fix misleading markers of consciousness, whether the emergence of consciousness is gradual, and how natural kinds can help us find new markers of consciousness.</jats:p>