Prenatal Maternal Determinants of Neonatal Social Development

社会反应，以社会参与的方式对他人的行为作出反应，是婴儿行为的一个基本特征，并有助于婴儿所经历的社会互动的类型和质量。早期的社会互动在支持情感、认知和语言发展方面起着重要作用。甚至产前经历也会影响婴儿日后的发展。例如，在怀孕后期听母亲说话可以使婴儿在出生后立即识别母语。然而，迄今为止，关于产前经历如何促进婴儿社会动机、社会学习或社会记忆的发展的研究很少。本研究的主要目的是研究母亲在产前的行为对婴儿出生后的社会动机、社会认知和社会学习记忆的影响。伦理方面的考虑限制了对产前经历进行实验研究的机会。使用动物模型的比较方法有助于弥补这一差距。与哺乳动物的产前环境难以进入和操纵相比，鸟类的卵子环境可以独立于母亲进行实验操纵，从而为测试预测产前因素提供了一个很好的动物模型，这些因素是随后出生后发育的基础。该项目将比较接受典型产前经验模式的鹌鹑雏鸟与接受改良的母源产前经验的雏鸟。核心假设是，母亲调节产前感觉刺激，产前环境中母亲来源的激素浓度，产前运动和光照量有助于婴儿社会反应能力的发展。该项目的研究结果将为更好地理解产前经历和产后行为之间的联系提供基础，并将为基于人类的早期社会发展研究提供研究方向。

Social responsiveness, reacting in a socially engaged way to the actions of others, is a fundamental characteristic of infant behavior and contributes to the type and quality of social interaction infants experience. Early social interactions play an important role in supporting emotional, cognitive, and language development. Even prenatal experience can influence infants' later development. For example, hearing mothers' speech late in pregnancy enables infants to recognize their native language immediately after birth. However, there has been little research to date regarding how prenatal experience contributes to the development of infant social motivation, social learning, or social memory. The primary goal of this project is to investigate how maternal behaviors during the prenatal period contribute to social motivation, social recognition, and social learning and memory after birth. Ethical considerations limit opportunities to conduct experimental research on prenatal experience. A comparative approach using animal models helps to bridge this gap. In contrast to mammals where the prenatal environment is difficult to access and manipulate, the avian egg environment can be experimentally manipulated independent of the mother and thereby provides an excellent animal model for testing predictions about prenatal factors underlying subsequent postnatal development. This project will compare quail chicks who received typical patterns of prenatal experience with chicks who received modified maternally derived prenatal experience. The central hypothesis is that maternally regulated prenatal sensory stimulation, concentrations of hormones of maternal origin in the prenatal environment, and amounts of prenatal movement and light exposure contribute to the development of infant social responsiveness. The findings of this project will provide a foundation for a better understanding of the links between prenatal experience and postnatal behavior, and will inform research directions for human-based studies of early social development.