Sustained Attachment to the Nipple in the Newborn Rat Depends on Experience With the Nipple, Milk, and the Expression of Oral Grasping

Newborn rats showed mouthing, licking, and oral grasping when presented with a surrogate nipple. These responses changed after the pup expressed an oral grasp response and experienced milk at the nipple. Newborn pups that ingested milk from the surrogate nipple showed brief oral grasp responses and,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral neuroscience 1999-02, Vol.113 (1), p.211-221
Main Authors: Petrov, Evgeniy S, Varlinskaya, Elena I, Bregman, Katherine, Smotherman, William P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal
Animal behavior
Animal Feeding Behavior
Animals
Animals, Newborn - physiology
Apparatus
Attachment Behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Experience Level
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Habituation, Psychophysiologic - physiology
Infants (Animal)
Instinctive Behavior
Male
Milk Ejection - physiology
Miscellaneous
Motivation
Pregnancy
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Rats
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
Rodents
Sucking
Sucking Behavior - physiology
suckling
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Summary:Newborn rats showed mouthing, licking, and oral grasping when presented with a surrogate nipple. These responses changed after the pup expressed an oral grasp response and experienced milk at the nipple. Newborn pups that ingested milk from the surrogate nipple showed brief oral grasp responses and, when tested 1 hr later, showed sustained attachment to an empty surrogate nipple. Contact with the nipple, oral grasping of the nipple, and experience with milk altered subsequent behavioral responses to the nipple. Classical and instrumental conditioning may play a role in transforming brief oral grasp responses into longer oral grasp responses and sustained attachment to the nipple.
ISSN:0735-7044
1939-0084
DOI:10.1037/0735-7044.113.1.211