Doctoral Dissertation Research: Allomaternal care and early life development

人类与其他灵长类动物不同的是，他们使用广泛的异体母系照顾(AMC)，即由母亲以外的人照顾婴儿。这个博士论文项目将调查早期接触多个照顾者的差异如何影响人类婴儿的早期沟通和认知发展。研究人员假设，AMC通过提供丰富多样的学习环境，在塑造交际和认知发展方面发挥着重要作用。识别暴露于AMC可能如何影响认知和交际发展轨迹，将有助于我们理解为什么广泛的AMC在人类物种中发展和保持。该项目将支持对STEM研究的研究生和本科生的培训和指导，以及亚利桑那大学人类学学院和弗朗西斯·麦克莱兰儿童、青年和家庭研究所之间的新伙伴关系。这项研究的结果也可能为教育项目提供支持，以支持沟通和认知发展。为了与公众分享他们的发现，研究人员将创建一个网站，并访问当地的母亲支持小组。AMC通过营养供应来补充婴儿强烈的能量需求，但之前的研究没有充分调查异母护理是否在其他方面对婴儿有利。这项研究强化了对AMC的传统看法，假设儿童在发育早期经常接受异体母系护理，除了营养支持外，还会获得重要的沟通和认知方面的好处。这项研究代表了一种跨学科的整体方法，旨在探索AMC对两岁前早期大脑发育的潜在影响。使用一种新的跨学科方法组合，包括问卷、日常日记、访谈、实验室任务和临床认知测量，该项目将研究护理如何影响幼儿的发展结果。参与者将包括13至18个月的婴儿和他们的母亲。这项研究的主要目的是确定AMC是否改善了早期的发育结果，即暴露于高水平AMC的婴儿比暴露于低水平AMC的婴儿在更小的年龄发展出更广泛的一套沟通和认知技能。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Humans differ from other primates in their use of extensive allomaternal care (AMC), where someone other than the mother cares for an infant. This doctoral dissertation project will investigate how differences in early exposure to multiple caregivers influence a human infant's early communicative and cognitive development. The researchers hypothesize that AMC plays a significant role in shaping communicative and cognitive development by providing a rich and varied learning environment. Identifying how exposure to AMC may influence cognitive and communicative developmental trajectories will advance our understanding of why extensive AMC developed and was maintained in the human species. This project will support training and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students in STEM research, and a new partnership between the University of Arizona's School of Anthropology and the Frances McClelland Institute for Children, Youth, and Families. The outcomes of this research may also inform educational programs to support communicative and cognitive development. To share their findings with the public, the researchers will generate a website and visit local mothers' support groups.AMC is known to supplement an infant's intense energy needs through nutritional provisioning, but previous research has not fully investigated whether allomaternal care benefits infants in other ways. This research enhances traditional perceptions of AMC by hypothesizing that children gain important communicative and cognitive benefits in addition to nutritional support when they receive frequent allomaternal care during early development. The research represents an interdisciplinary, holistic approach to exploring the potential effects of AMC on early brain development before the age of two. Using a novel combination of interdisciplinary methods, including questionnaires, daily diaries, interviews, laboratory tasks, and clinical cognitive measures, this project will examine how care impacts developmental outcomes in young children. Participants will include infants aged 13 to 18 months and their mothers. The primary objective of this study is to determine whether AMC improves early developmental outcomes, such that infants exposed to high levels of AMC develop a more extensive set of communicative and cognitive skills at a younger age than infants exposed to low levels of AMC.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.