Tune to touch: Affective touch enhances learning of face identity in 4-month-old infants.

ABSTRACT: Touch provides more than sensory input for discrimination of what is on the skin. From early in development it has a rewarding and motivational value, which may reflect an evolutionary mechanism that promotes learning and affiliative bonding. In the present study we investigated whether affective touch helps infants tune to social signals, such as faces. Four-month-old infants were habituated to an individual face with averted gaze, which typically does not engage infants to the same extent as direct gaze does. As in a previous study, in the absence of touch, infants did not learn the identity of this face. Critically, 4-month-old infants did learn to discriminate this face when parents provided gentle stroking, but they did not when they experienced a non-social tactile stimulation. A pre

SUBMITTER: Della Longa L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6347579 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature