Dissertation Research: Individual Differences in Attachment Behavior of Free-Ranging Rhesus Macaques and Their Social and Cogitive Consequences

鲍尔比最初提出的依恋行为在很大程度上依赖于行为学，特别是非人灵长类动物的研究。通过分析非人类灵长类动物的行为来揭示行为，特别是在自然环境中，是行为学研究的长期目标之一。这项对自由放养猕猴的研究将进一步加深我们对婴儿依恋行为的持久影响的理解，以及进化在多大程度上限制了婴儿在紧急情况下或在对社会和物理环境的日常探索中选择母亲以外的个体作为安全基础的能力。具体地说，我们将测试：(1)早期婴儿-母亲依恋关系中的个体差异是否会影响某些认知评估和社会行为，这些认知评估和社会行为预计对一个人的一生至关重要，以及(2)婴儿是从替代的安全基础和风险减少器中选择，还是完全依赖他们的母亲来实现这些功能。该项目开发了衡量婴儿评估风险、在可能降低婴儿风险的猴子中进行选择以及参与社会和物理环境探索的能力的方法。这些测量将在整个婴儿期进行，并与安全碱基使用的个体差异相关，以确定安全碱基使用的差异是否预示着这些认知和社会能力的未来差异。为了衡量使用安全碱基的个体差异，传统的行为学抽样方法将与最近修改的Q-Sort程序的分数进行比较，以评估猕猴使用安全碱基的情况，并对这两种程序的效率和可靠性进行评估。研究种群是波多黎各圣地亚哥卡约岛上自由活动的恒河猴种群。所有猴子都是个体可识别的，它们的谱系是已知的；它们的相对等级将在研究期间确定。我们的结果有望增加对安全基地使用中个体差异的来源和意义的理解。为确定充当安全基地的个人并评估安全基地使用的质量而开发的方法将使我们能够探索除母亲以外的其他个人是否以及何时充当安全基地。

Bowlby's original formulation of attachment behavior relied heavily on ethology, especially nonhuman primate studies. Shedding light on behaviors by analyzing nonhuman primate behavior, especially in naturalistic settings, is one of the longstanding goals of ethological studies. This study of free-ranging rhesus macaques will further our understanding of the lasting effects of infant attachment behavior and the extent to which evolution may have limited an infant's ability to choose individuals other than its mother as a secure base in emergencies or during day-to-day exploration of the social and physical environment. Specifically, we will test whether: (1) individual differences in early infant-mother attachment bonds influence certain cognitive assessments and social behaviors that can be expected to be vital to an individual throughout its life-span, and (2) whether infants choose among alternative secure bases and risk-reducers or rely exclusively on their mothers for these functions.The project develops methods for measuring infants' abilities to assess risk, to choose among monkeys that might reduce risk to the infants, and to engage in exploration of the social and physical environment. These measures will be made throughout infancy and related to individual differences in secure base use to determine whether differences in secure base use predict later differences in these cognitive and social abilities. To measure individual differences in secure base use traditional ethological sampling methods will be compared with scores on a Q-sort procedure recently modified to assess secure base use in macaques and the two procedures are assessed for efficiency and reliability. The study population is the free-ranging population of rhesus macaques on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. All monkeys are individually recognizable and their genealogies known; their relative ranks will be determined during the study.Our results are expected to increase understanding of the sources and significance of individual differences in secure base use. Methods developed to identify individuals that act as secure bases and to evaluate the quality of secure base use will enable us to explore whether and when individuals other than mothers serve as secure bases.