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Children learn language from adults who, on meeting a child, always
test the level of the child's language abilities and then switch to a
'caretaker language' to continue conversing. A 'caretaker language' is
grammatically slightly advanced beyond the level where the child is
at. People who 'baby-talk' to children are those who have made no
effort to guage the child's current abilities.

What Jaynes suggests is that consciousness is similarly learned. He
places it at about age 7 or 8. It involves recognizing yourself as
seen by others - an analog 'I' which is then internalized and placed
into the spaces of the imagination and can vault through time. You can
actually watch parents make these suggestions to small children.

Since it is learned, it is cultural, rather than biological. Having to
meet strangers forces a recognition that others might have
consciousness, and that they might see this in you. It results in the
creation of an analog 'I' as the way others see you, and by reflection
as a way you imagine yourself.

It is instructive to observe children 4 to 7 year old, although the
state of consciousness depends very much on their verbal abilities and
thus on the interaction they have with their parents and others.
Pre-conscious children have recognizable behaviour patterns which
might be reflected in the following to various degrees:

* - They often have hopelessly inadequate concepts of space and
travel time ("Are we there yet?"). Experience with travel modifies
that.
* - They will interrupt adult conversations with non-sequitors, for
there is no ability to narratize the present as a mental space in
which they can fit themselves and observe the (real) space as if
from afar (that is, in the mind), and to narratize into that
mental space what others might hear or might be thinking at the
moment.
* - They lack any clear memory of the past except for events they
have been told about and some critical events which may have been
reenacted mentally. Pre-language memories are almost entirely
absent in everyone.
* - They show little of the self-consciousness which would result in
being able to see yourself from an exterior perspective.
* - The imagination exercised in play is often unbounded by reality
and often lacks a measure of time. Importantly, the play space
often lacks themselves as an involved actor.
* - They are often very opinionated, blurting out the opinions of
their parents in lieu of any original 'thinking' on a subject, a
trait which often caries far into adulthood. Original thoughts on
a particular subject would involve being able to create imagined
spaces for action in the mind, and walking an analog 'I' through
these spaces to evaluate alternative outcomes.

Yet children are fully functional. They learn to read, do math, learn
skills, they learn how things work, and how to interact with others.
They can create and appreciate jokes. But the guide to their actions
are the parental admonitions which were heard, remembered, and
recalled. It is in fact the right hemisphere which does this for any
predictable situation.