Читать книгу The Handbook of Solitude - Группа авторов - Страница 55

The standard paradigm used to examine the impact of maternal caregiving on rodent pups’ development is housing the parent and her pups in one room in isolation from other rodents. However, under naturalistic conditions, rodent offspring are more typically reared by multiple female and sometimes male adults. Lactating mothers who rear their offspring in these communal nests were observed to display higher levels of sensitive caregiving such as nursing and licking and grooming behaviors during the postpartum period compared to mothers who reared their offspring alone (see Curley & Champagne, 2016). Compared to offspring reared in standard conditions, offspring reared in communal nests were shown to have more positive outcomes including increased exploratory behaviors, reduced anxiety‐like behaviors, more social behaviors, and increased hippocampal and hypothalamic nerve growth factor (see Curley & Champagne, 2016). The enhanced developmental outcomes of communally reared offspring are likely a function of receiving increased responsive caregiving from mothers and other adults.