Infant-holding side biases: Comparison of laterality patterns in childcare professionals and mothers or students
Among the various interactions between an adult and an infant, postural behaviours and their lateral biases expressed by adults for holding an infant represent a growing field of investigation. To better understand the building up of mother/child relationships, the current study reports
data concerning infant-holding biases collected in a new population, namely childcare professionals, where experience with and emotional relationships with infants could be classified as intermediate between basic and advanced. Two sub-populations of childcare professionals were studied: women
who work in maternity hospitals and women who work in day-care centres. Their infant-holding side preferences were correlated with emotional perceptive biases to ascertain whether hemispheric specialisation influences holding side biases as well as in basic holding relationships. Results
showed that childcare professionals behaved like mothers, which means like participants with advanced holding relationships. The discussion emphasises the complexity of infant-holding behaviours and the importance of considering the nature of holding relationships in the study of side-of-hold
biases.
Keywords: Childcare; Cradling; Infant holding; Laterality; Maternity hospitals
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France
Publication date: 01 May 2011
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content