Oxytocin but not naturally occurring variation in caregiver touch associates with infant social orienting

Autor(en)
Alicja Brzozowska, Matthew R. Longo, Denis Mareschal, Frank Wiesemann, Teodora Gliga
Abstrakt

Caregiver touch is crucial for infants’ healthy development, but its role in shaping infant cognition has been relatively understudied. In particular, despite strong premises to hypothesize its function in directing infant attention to social information, little empirical evidence exists on the topic. In this study, we investigated the associations between naturally occurring variation in caregiver touch and infant social attention in a group of 6- to 13-month-old infants (n = 71). Additionally, we measured infant salivary oxytocin as a possible mediator of the effects of touch on infant social attention. The hypothesized effects were investigated both short term, with respect to touch observed during parent–infant interactions in the lab, and long term, with respect to parent-reported patterns of everyday touching behaviors. We did not find evidence that caregiver touch predicts infant social attention or salivary oxytocin levels, short term or long term. However, we found that salivary oxytocin predicted infant preferential attention to faces relative to nonsocial objects, measured in an eye-tracking task. Our findings confirm the involvement of oxytocin in social orienting in infancy, but raise questions regarding the possible environmental factors influencing the infant oxytocin system.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Psychologie der Entwicklung und Bildung
Externe Organisation(en)
University of London, Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, University of East Anglia
Journal
Developmental Psychobiology
Band
64
Anzahl der Seiten
12
ISSN
0012-1630
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22290
Publikationsdatum
06-2022
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
501005 Entwicklungspsychologie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Developmental and Educational Psychology, Developmental Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Developmental Biology
Link zum Portal
https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/de/publications/oxytocin-but-not-naturally-occurring-variation-in-caregiver-touch-associates-with-infant-social-orienting(86d5ed60-2eaf-42a3-80d2-cfc0e2965813).html