The emergence and maintenance of interdyad differences in the mother-infant relationships of rhesus macaques: A correlational study |
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Authors: | M J A Simpson A E 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: | The role of the mother in promoting infant independence, reflected in the time spent out of contact with her by the infant,
was addressed with a simple correlational approach to scores of time out of contact (Off) and frequencies of acts of maternal
rejection and restriction through the infants’ first 16 weeks of life. Correlations of the extents of age changes from week
to week were also examined. Infants differed consistently in the times they spent off from their fourth through their eighth
weeks, while rates of maternal restriction and rejection were consistent from week 4 until at least week 8 in both sexes and
from week 2 in females. The correlations were consistent with the view that time off was set at its week-4 and possibly later
levels by maternal rejection, while some further changes in time off, resulting in a loss of consistency from week to week,
reflected the extents to which mothers of daughters decreased their restrictive behavior. Weeks in which individual differences
in maternal restriction and rejection were correlated with differences in time spent off were generally weeks in which changes
in group means of these mean measures were correlated. In daughters, age changes of individual dyad’s scores of time off and
maternal rejection were correlated between week 2 and week 4, supporting the view that in these early weeks age changes and
individual differences were produced by the same processes. Findings from comparative and experimental studies, and the limitations
of correlational approaches now available, are discussed. |
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Keywords: | mother-infant relationship Macaca mulatto infant independence maternalrestriction maternal rejection |
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