How rhesus monkey mothers and infants keep in touch when infants are at risk from social companions |
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Authors: | M J A Simpson |
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Institution: | (1) MRC Unit on the Development and Integration of Behaviour, University Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, High Street, CB3 8AA Madingley, Cambridge, UK |
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Abstract: | Ten-to 17-week-old rhesus monkey infants that received hits from companions other than their mother at high rates (relative
to their rates of involvement in playful social encounters with those companions) tended to be members of mother-infant dyads
that were vigilant. Criteria of vigilance were frequent contacts between mother and infant during the first 5 sec of the infants’
social encounters and/or a bias of mother-infant contacts toward that time. Infants that received few hits per encounter came
from both vigilant and nonvigilant dyads. When analyzed alone, mothers’ rates showed the same trends. High levels of vigilance
tended to reduce infants’rates of making social contacts. Maternal social rank and other measures of the infants’ social involvement
were not correlated with vigilance. There is no evidence that mothers and infants were in conflict with each other about interrupting
the infants’ encounters. Understanding vigilance becomes important whenever vigilant activity conflicts with other activities.
Special problems arise because decisions about vigilance levels require judgments of risk based on the kinds of events that
occur only rarely if vigilance is effective. A model providing a framework for studies of vigilance against the risks of infants’
social activities was developed. It recognizes that (1) risk-reducing vigilant behavior can conflict with acquiring information
about risk; (2) in social situations where reliable estimates of risk are impossible, individuals might follow rules of thumb (e.g., be
restrictive) rather than modify behavior moment by moment according to the current situation;and (3) at the dyad’s optimum balance between vigilance for the current infant and investment in subsequent off-spring, the
infant will not be totally protected, so that while dyads at higher risks are more vigilant, the risks are also realized to
a greater extent (e.g., itin terms of the number of hits received per encounter). |
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Keywords: | hit infant information Macaca mulatta mother play social companion |
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