The effects of separation on the mother-infant interaction during reunion in ten to twelve day old rat litters.
Item
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Title
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The effects of separation on the mother-infant interaction during reunion in ten to twelve day old rat litters.
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Identifier
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AAI9130396
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identifier
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9130396
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Creator
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Zmitrovich, Ann Carroll.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Myron A. Hofer
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Date
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1991
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Psychology, Psychobiology | Psychology, Experimental
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Abstract
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The goals of this dissertation were to characterize the mother-infant interaction upon reunion after an 18 hour separation period and to determine the relative contributions of the dam and pups to the interaction seen during the first two hours.;Results show that the interaction upon reunion contained both efficient and disrupted behaviors as a result of separation effects. These results could be interpreted as the interaction of many processes at different stages of adaptation to the separated state being reexposed to the various aspects of the mother-infant relationship that were present prior to separation.;An aspect of the mother-infant interaction that appears to resume easily and increase in efficiency is milk delivery and consumption by separated litters. The presence of a novel milk ejection (ME) response contributed to this result. Behaviors that appear not to help the efficiency of the reunion include the hyperarousal of the pups and hypersensitivity of the dam possibly preventing a decrease in latency to attach, latency to the first ME, or a decrease in the inter-ME-interval. And finally, other behaviors were clearly disruptive, such as minutes of unattachment during nursing, and weight loss in pups over 24 hours possibly due to a decreased milk supply.;The divergent changes that occurred in both the dam and pups during separation, accounting for the presence of both adapted and disrupted behaviors, can be seen as creating a qualitatively new relationship upon reunion with novel features. Although novel behaviors or rates of behaviors were present, there was no effect of separation on many of the major variables of the interaction. We can conclude that the achievement of these aspects of the interaction is the result of great flexibility and adaptability on the part of the dam and pups within the mother-infant relationship.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
