Attachment and Differentiation in Rhesus Monkey Infants

The Bowen Center

Recent research has demonstrated that — like some human newborn infants — newborn rhesus monkey infants are capable of engaging in extensive face-to-face interactions with their mothers throughout their initial days and weeks of life. These face-to-face interactions are thought to facilitate establishing attachment bonds between the infants and their mothers. However, unlike the case for human infants, such interactions largely disappear during the monkeys’ second month of life and seldom reappear. Possible factors underlying this dramatic difference between these two species will be presented and discussed, including the likely need for the monkey infants to begin to differentiate their own social activities from those of their mothers as their locomotive and other physical capabilities rapidly mature.

Stephen J. Suomi, PhD is the Chief of the Laboratory of Comparative Ethology at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD. This lecture was recorded live at The Bowen Center in Washington, DC on April 15, 2015.