About 66-72% of human mothers cradle their infants on their left side. Given that left-cradling exposes the baby's face to the mother's left visual field (i.e., mainly projected to her right hemisphere) and is altered by emotional states such as stress, maternal left-cradling was interpreted as reflecting right-hemispheric dominance for emotional processing. Whether this phenomenon is unique to human evolution is still in debate. In the present study we followed 44 olive baboon (Papio anubis) mothers and their infants in different social groups. We found that a maternal cradling bias exists and is predominantly towards the left in a similar proportion as in humans, but shifts toward a right bias in mothers living in high density groups. The sensitivity of left-cradling to social pressure highlights its potential links with the mother's stress as reported in humans. Our finding clearly illustrates the phylogenetic continuity between humans and Old-World monkeys concerning this lateralization and its potential links with hemispheric specialization for emotions, inherited from a common ancestor 25-35 million years ago.
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Maternal cradling bias: A marker of the nature of the mother-infant relationship.
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Center for Research on the Psychology of Cognition, Language and Emotion (PsyCLE), Aix-Marseille University, Aix-en-Provence, France. Electronic address:
The tendency of mothers to cradle their infant on their left side was first demonstrated by Salk back in 1960, but has been the subject of renewed interest in recent years. In this paper, I examine the different aspects of this tendency, making a short detour to explore this behavioral bias in other mammals and in nonhuman primates. The left cradling bias has been investigated not only in mothers, but also in fathers, children and students, as well as in different cultures.
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Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti and Pescara, Chieti, Italy.
In humans, behavioral laterality and hemispheric asymmetries are part of a complex biobehavioral system in which genetic factors have been repeatedly proposed as developmental determinants of both phenomena. However, no model solely based on genetic factors has proven conclusive, pushing towards the inclusion of environmental and epigenetic factors into the system. Moreover, it should be pointed out that epigenetic modulation might also account for why certain genes are expressed differently in parents and offspring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman-like maternal left-cradling bias in monkeys is altered by social pressure.
Sci Rep
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Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive UMR7290, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, 3 Place Victor Hugo, 13331, Marseille Cedex 3, France.
About 66-72% of human mothers cradle their infants on their left side. Given that left-cradling exposes the baby's face to the mother's left visual field (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReceived Cradling Bias During the First Year of Life: A Retrospective Study on Children With Typical and Atypical Development.
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Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy.
A population-level left cradling bias exists whereby 60-90% of mothers hold their infants on the left side. This left biased positioning appears to be mutually beneficial to both the mother and the baby's brain organization for processing of socio-emotional stimuli. Previous research connected cradling asymmetries and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), entailing impairment in socio-communicative relationships and characterized by an early hypo-lateralization of brain functions.
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Evol Psychol
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1 Department of Psychological, Health and Territorial Sciences, University "G. d'Annunzio" of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy.
Mothers usually cradle their infants to the left of their body midline, an asymmetry that seems to be a typically female lateral preference. This bias is deemed to be an evolutionary facilitator of communication between cradling and cradled individuals and is believed to be strongly related to hemispheric specialization for complex socio-affective behaviors. Thus, left cradling might facilitate affective interactions in females with typical brain organization, probably due to a right-hemisphere dominance for social attachment.
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