Reciprocal face-to-face communication between rhesus macaque mothers and their newborn infants.

ABSTRACT: Human mothers interact emotionally with their newborns through exaggerated facial expressions, speech, mutual gaze, and body contact, a capacity that has long been considered uniquely human [1-4]. Current developmental psychological theories propose that this pattern of mother-infant exchange promotes the regulation of infant emotions [4-6] and serves as a precursor of more complex forms of social exchange including perspective taking and empathy. Here we report that in rhesus macaques, mother-infant pairs also communicate intersubjectively via complex forms of emotional exchanges including exaggerated lipsmacking, sustained mutual gaze, mouth-mouth contacts, and neonatal imitation. Infant macaques solicit their mother's affiliative responses and actively communicate to her. However, this

SUBMITTER: Ferrari PF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2784245 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature