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Primiparous and multiparous monkey mothers in a mildly stressful social situation: First three months
Author(s) -
Mitchell G.,
Stevens C. W.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.420010411
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , test (biology) , medicine , biology , paleontology
Eight primiparous rhesus monkey mothers were matched with 8 multiparous rhesus monkey mothers with regard to date of delivery and sex of infant. Each mother was housed and tested individually with her infant to preclude the compensating effects of peer experience. The test situation involved transporting each mother‐infant pair from the home cage to a test cage of similar size where the pair was visually exposed to a strange mother‐infant pair and human observers. The primiparous mothers looked at, threatened, fear grimaced, and lip‐smacked to these social stimuli significantly more frequently than did the multiparous females. In addition, the inexperienced mothers stroked or petted their infants significantly more frequently than the experienced mothers. The results support the idea that primiparous mothers are more “anxious” or concerned for their infants' welfare than are multiparous mothers.