Own Mother (own + mother)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Olfactory preference for own mother and litter in 1-day-old rabbits and its impairment by thermotaxis

DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOBIOLOGY, Issue 6 2008
Jessica Serra
Abstract We investigated the ability of rabbit pups to display preferences towards various elements of their postnatal environment during the stage of confinement in the nest. Subjects were submitted to a two-choice test during the first week after birth to assess if they could detect and discriminate between does, litters of pups, or nesting materials of the same developmental stage. On D1 and D7, pups were attracted to any lactating doe, litter, or nest when compared to an empty compartment. When two stimuli were opposed, pups preferred their own nest to an alien one on D1 and D7 but not their mother nor their siblings when opposed to alien does or pups. However, additional tests indicated that this lack of preference for kin conspecifics resulted from a predominant attraction to thermal cues over individual odors. Indeed, pups were strongly attracted to a warm compartment (37°C) than to a cooler one (20°C) and once thermal cues were controlled for in the testing situation, the pups were specifically attracted to odors of their own mother's hair and of their siblings. No preference was observed towards the mother's uterine secretions. In conclusion, pups can recognize olfactory cues emanating from their mother and their siblings the day after birth. The preference for nesting materials would reflect in major part the combined attraction to maternal and sibling odors present in the nest. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 50: 542,553, 2008. [source]


Predictors of representational aggression in preschool children of low-income urban African American adolescent mothers,

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
Geoff Goodman
Responses to five doll-story stems thematically related to attachment experiences with the mother were videotaped in the home and used to evaluate child, maternal, and environmental predictors of representational aggression in 93 preschool children of African American women receiving public assistance who had become pregnant as teenagers. Significant correlations were found between representational aggression and child's gender (male), birth weight, maternal depressive affect, maternal educational attainment, recent employment, mother's historical residence with her own mother, and felt social support, accounting for 40% of the variance in representational aggression. A significant Felt Social Support × Gender interaction effect suggested that girls of mothers who perceive higher levels of felt social support are more likely to represent less aggression in their stories; felt social support was not associated with boys' representational aggression. A significant Felt Social Support × Employment interaction effect suggested that representational aggression is associated with lower levels of felt social support only among employed mothers. Findings suggest that different pathways exist for representational aggression in children of low-income adolescent mothers, which nevertheless share predictors associated with poverty. [source]


Analysis of factors that affect maternal behaviour and breeding success in great apes in captivity

INTERNATIONAL ZOO YEARBOOK, Issue 1 2006
M. T. ABELLO
In this paper the relationship between maternal behaviour and breeding success (or failure) in great apes is described. Data were gathered from a questionnaire survey returned by 48 zoos and from available studbook data, giving a total sample size of 687 individuals [Gorillas Gorilla gorilla (n= 277), Bonobos Pan paniscus (n= 37), Chimpanzees Pan troglodytes (n= 216) and Orangutans Pongo pygmaeus (n= 157)] born between 1990 and 2000 at 86 institutions. The factors influencing maternal behaviour are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the importance of learning and experience for the development of good maternal skills. The rearing background and social-group circumstances of the breeding , were analysed, including her rearing situation (own mother, conspecific surrogate or hand-reared), opportunity (or not) to observe maternal behaviour in conspecifics during development and previous breeding experience. The effects of maternal training are also analysed. The results show that for a , great ape to demonstrate good maternal skills, the most effective experience is to have been reared by her own mother and to have observed maternal behaviour in a social group comprising mature individuals and infants. This gives ,, the opportunity to observe and learn how to care adequately for their own offspring. [source]


Freud's prehistoric matrix-Owing ,nature' a death

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Issue 6 2007
Joan Raphael-Leff
This paper is informed by contemporary literature in two fields-neonatal research, on the one hand, and the burgeoning interdisciplinary interest in Moses and monotheism, on the other. The author postulates that a cluster of traumatic events during the first two years of Freud's life compelled him to repeat what could not be remembered. Embedded in charged implicit schema, these affects remained unprocessed in Freud, who alone of all psychoanalysts did not have an analysis, manifesting in an uncanny dread/allure of the ,prehistoric' as a dark and dangerous era relating to the archaic feminine/maternal matrix and fratricidal murderousness. Furthermore, she cites evidence to suggest that for Freud this unconsciously excluded subtext of the preoedipal era became associated with ancient Egyptian and Minoan-Mycenaean cultures, a passionate fascination actualized in his collection of antiquities yet incongruously absent in his theoretical work, with three exceptions-Egyptian allusions in Leonardo's unconscious attachment to his archaic mother; the ,Minoan-Mycenaean' analogy on discovering the pre-oedipal mother shortly after the death of Freud's own mother; and Egypt as cradle of humanity in his uncharacteristically rambling, troubled text of Moses and monotheism. The author sees Freud's conceptual avoidance yet compulsive reworking of the prehistoric matrix as a symptomatic attempt to expose early unformulated representations that ,return to exert a powerful effect.' [source]


The Role of Person Familiarity in Young Infants' Perception of Emotional Expressions

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2001
Ronit Kahana-Kalman
This research investigated the role of person familiarity in the ability of 3.5-month-old infants to recognize emotional expressions. Infants (N= 72) were presented simultaneously with two filmed facial expressions, happy and sad, accompanied by a single vocal expression that was concordant with one of the two facial expressions. Infants' looking preferences and facial expressions were coded. Results indicated that when the emotional expressions were portrayed by each infant's own mother, infants looked significantly longer toward the facial expressions that were accompanied by affectively matching vocal expressions. Infants who were presented with emotional expressions of an unfamiliar woman did not. Even when a brief delay was inserted between the presentation of facial and vocal expressions, infants who were presented with emotional expressions of their own mothers looked longer at the facial expression that was sound specified, indicating that some factor other than temporal synchrony guided their looking preferences. When infants viewed the films of their own mothers, they were more interactive and expressed more positive and less negative affect. Moreover, infants produced a greater number of full and bright smiles when the sound-specified emotion was "happy," and particularly when they viewed the happy expressions of their own mothers. The average duration of negative affect was significantly longer for infants who observed the unfamiliar woman than for those who observed their own mothers. These results show that when more contextual information,that is, person familiarity ,was available, infants as young as 3.5 months of age recognized happy and sad expressions. These findings suggest that in the early stages of development, infants are sensitive to contextual information that potentially facilitates some of the meaning of others' emotional expressions. [source]


A Privileged Status for Male Infant-Directed Speech in Infants of Depressed Mothers?

INFANCY, Issue 2 2010
Role of Father Involvement
Prior research showed that 5- to 13-month-old infants of chronically depressed mothers did not learn to associate a segment of infant-directed speech produced by their own mothers or an unfamiliar nondepressed mother with a smiling female face, but showed better-than-normal learning when a segment of infant-directed speech produced by an unfamiliar nondepressed father signaled the face. Here, learning in response to an unfamiliar nondepressed father's infant-directed speech was studied as a function both of the mother's depression and marital status, a proxy measure of father involvement. Infants of unmarried mothers on average did not show significant learning in response to the unfamiliar nondepressed father's infant-directed speech. Infants of married mothers showed significant learning in response to male infant-directed speech, and infants of depressed, married mothers showed significantly stronger learning in response to that stimulus than did infants of nondepressed, married mothers. Several ways in which father involvement may positively or negatively affect infant responsiveness to male infant-directed speech are discussed. [source]


Parental representations and subclinical changes in postpartum mood

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 3 2007
Linda C. Mayes
Parents commonly experience a depressed mood in the immediate postpartum period, and a smaller proportion experience clinical postpartum depression. Among other factors, mental representations of early parenting experience appear to contribute to the development of major depressive disorder. The present study examines the role of mental representations of early parenting in subclinical fluctuations of parental mood in the peripartum period. Forty-one middle-class mothers and thirty-six fathers were interviewed on three occasions from late in their pregnancy until three months postpartum. Ratings of social support and past history of depression were obtained along with ratings of parents' perceptions of their early parenting experiences. Parents' perception of their own maternal care was significantly predictive of peripartum fluctuations in mood. Parents who perceived their own mothers as less caring showed more dysphoria at 8 months gestation, and at 2 weeks and 3 months postpartum. Perceptions of maternal protectiveness or fathers' caring and protectiveness were not related to prenatal or postpartum mood fluctuations. Both mothers and fathers who perceived their mothers as affectionless and/or controlling were more likely to experience fluctuations in mood in the peripartum period. A past history of one or more episodes of major depression and ratings of perceived social support were also associated with more peripartum mood fluctuation. These findings suggest that early parenting experiences set the threshold for how vulnerable parents are in the peripartum period to the depressive costs of engaging with a new infant. [source]


Patterns of emotional availability among young mothers and their infants: A dydaic, contextual analysis

INFANT MENTAL HEALTH JOURNAL, Issue 4 2005
M. Ann Easterbrooks
The aim of this study was to examine patterns of emotional availability among 80 young mothers (under 21 years at their child's birth) and their infants, and to identify contextual and individual factors associated with different patterns of emotional availability. To operationalize the dyadic aspect of emotional availability, cluster analysis of the Emotional Availability Scales, third edition (EAS; Biringen, Robinson, & Emde, 1998) was conducted on mother and infant scales simultaneously. Four distinct groups of emotional availability patterns emerged, reflecting synchrony and asynchrony between maternal and child behavior: (a) low-functioning dyads, (b) average dyads, (c) average parenting/disengaged infants, and (d) high-functioning dyads. Further analyses revealed that mothers in different clusters differed on outcomes such as depressive symptomatology, social support, and relationships with their own mothers. The clusters and the variables related to them demonstrate the various challenges in integrating the dual tasks of adolescent and parenting development among young mothers. The clinical implications of these patterns of emotional availability and live context are discussed. [source]


The Role of Person Familiarity in Young Infants' Perception of Emotional Expressions

CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2001
Ronit Kahana-Kalman
This research investigated the role of person familiarity in the ability of 3.5-month-old infants to recognize emotional expressions. Infants (N= 72) were presented simultaneously with two filmed facial expressions, happy and sad, accompanied by a single vocal expression that was concordant with one of the two facial expressions. Infants' looking preferences and facial expressions were coded. Results indicated that when the emotional expressions were portrayed by each infant's own mother, infants looked significantly longer toward the facial expressions that were accompanied by affectively matching vocal expressions. Infants who were presented with emotional expressions of an unfamiliar woman did not. Even when a brief delay was inserted between the presentation of facial and vocal expressions, infants who were presented with emotional expressions of their own mothers looked longer at the facial expression that was sound specified, indicating that some factor other than temporal synchrony guided their looking preferences. When infants viewed the films of their own mothers, they were more interactive and expressed more positive and less negative affect. Moreover, infants produced a greater number of full and bright smiles when the sound-specified emotion was "happy," and particularly when they viewed the happy expressions of their own mothers. The average duration of negative affect was significantly longer for infants who observed the unfamiliar woman than for those who observed their own mothers. These results show that when more contextual information,that is, person familiarity ,was available, infants as young as 3.5 months of age recognized happy and sad expressions. These findings suggest that in the early stages of development, infants are sensitive to contextual information that potentially facilitates some of the meaning of others' emotional expressions. [source]