Through the Specificity Lens: Comparative Physiology to Study Commonalities and Differences in Parent-Infant Interaction

• In Event: 1-090 - Specificity in Developmental Science: Illustrations from Species, Cultures, and Families

Integrative Statement

Mammals have a biological predisposition to social interaction. Infants actively and instinctively seek and maintain their caregiver’s proximity and care, and caregivers also instinctively seek and respond to their infants. Responsiveness to infants is among the most biologically relevant and adaptive behaviors and constitutes a basis of parent-infant interaction. The biological mechanisms guiding these early interactions are shared or similar across mammalian species. However, the behaviors which caregivers and infants use during their interactions differ widely across mammalian species. Here, I present studies on infant cry (one of the earliest forms of communication in mammals), and caregivers’ responses to infant cry. Notable among such responses are motor behaviors -- picking the infant up, applying tactile and vestibular stimulation, and vocalizing to the infant -- that are shared across mammalian species. In this talk, I present convergent results from different experiments, employing different methodologies (fMRI, NIRS, TMS) in humans as well as findings from animal studies (rodents and non-human primates) that show how genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors in combination with cultural contexts regulate early parent-infant interactional experiences. My studies reveal how early caregiver-infant interactions across mammalian species reveal some shared brain mechanisms and also specificities in expressed behaviours. We set our discussion in the context of the adaptive value of these differences.

Author

• Gianluca Esposito, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; University of Trento, Italy
  Presenting Author