Poster #2 - Allomaternal Caregiving Shapes Early Learning Outcomes in Infants Aged 13-18 Months

• In Event: 1-169 - Poster Session 04
  In Poster Session: PS 04 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

Among mammals in general, and primates more specifically, humans raise their offspring using unique patterns of extensive shared care from both related and non-related individuals other than the mother, also known as allomaternal care or AMC (Burkart et al., 2014). Previous research has focused on explaining why such extensive AMC emerged in humans and not our great ape relatives (Hawkes, 2014). Anthropologists have largely concentrated on how extensive AMC can provide energetic support to growing infants through food sharing, while also reducing a mother’s energetic load by spreading the physical burden of care around (Kuzawa & Bragg, 2012). Yet, regardless of whether caregivers share food with infants or not, allomaternal caregivers represent an opportunity for infants to learn about the world in new ways, as each caregiver is likely to interact with the infant in slightly different ways (e.g., Jung & Fouts, 2011). Thus, extensive AMC may also be linked to improved developmental outcomes. Researchers have investigated how care impacts developmental outcomes in older children (e.g., NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2002), but further research is needed to investigate the effects of AMC during early infancy. The objective of the present study is to determine whether exposure to AMC improves early learning, such that infants exposed to more care exhibit higher cognitive scores than infants exposed to less care. I collected data from 103 mothers and their infants aged 13-18 months in Tucson, Arizona from May 2017-August 2018 using a variety of interdisciplinary methods. Results were analyzed using General Linear Models in R version 3.5.1. Predictor variables linked to AMC exposure include: the number of allomaternal caregivers that infants interacted with during the last 60 days, the number of allomaternal caregivers that infants have interacted with throughout their lifetime, and the average number of hours an infant interacted with allomaternal caregivers each day over a two-week period. Cognitive skills were assessed via infant scores on the NCHS Motor and Social Development Scales (MSD) and Pearson Clinical Bayley-III Screening Cognitive Subtest (Bayley). The results demonstrate that these AMC variables alone do not fully explain developmental outcomes. Younger infants (aged 13-15 months) had higher scores if they received more hours of care per day (MSD: p<0.01 and Bayley: p<0.07), and if they came from households with higher incomes (MSD: p<0.01 and Bayley: p<0.1). Younger infants had lower scores on the MSD and higher scores on the Bayley if they had more caregivers in the last 60 days (MSD: p<0.02 and Bayley: p<0.09). Older infants (aged 16-18 months) had higher scores on both tests if they had more caregivers in the last 60 days (MSD: p<0.08 and Bayley: p<0.02) and were female (MSD: p<0.08 and Bayley: p<0.01). However, for both younger and older infants, interactions between AMC variables and sex, income, birth order, total number of household residents, and attendance at formal childcare facilities complicates these relationships. These results suggest that AMC may help explain differences in cognitive outcomes during early infancy, while further modeling is necessary to fully understand these relationships.

Author

• Britt Singletary, University of Arizona, School of Anthropology
  Presenting Author