Neonatal face-to-face interactions promote later social behaviour in infant rhesus monkeys

Dettmer, A. M., Kaburu, S. S. K., Simpson, E. A., Paukner, A., Sclafani, V., Byers, K. L., Murphy, A. M., Miller, M., Marquez, N., Miller, G. M., Suomi, S. J. and Ferrari, P. F. (2016) Neonatal face-to-face interactions promote later social behaviour in infant rhesus monkeys. Nature Communications, 7. 11940. ISSN 2041-1723 doi: 10.1038/ncomms11940

Abstract/Summary

In primates, including humans, mothers engage in face-to-face interactions with their infants, with frequencies varying both within and across species. However, the impact of this variation in face-to-face interactions on infant social development is unclear. Here we report that infant monkeys (Macaca mulatta) who engaged in more neonatal face-to-face interactions with mothers have increased social interactions at 2 and 5 months. In a controlled experiment, we show that this effect is not due to physical contact alone: monkeys randomly assigned to receive additional neonatal face-to-face interactions (mutual gaze and intermittent lip-smacking) with human caregivers display increased social interest at 2 months, compared with monkeys who received only additional handling. These studies suggest that face-to-face interactions from birth promote young primate social interest and competency

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/66227
Identification Number/DOI	10.1038/ncomms11940
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary centres and themes > Winnicott
Publisher	Nature Publishing Group
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