Maternal Deprivation: Its Influence on Visual Exploration in Infant Monkeys

Abstract

Visual exploration was studied in maternally reared and maternally deprived monkeys. When an animal pressed a bar an opaque screen was raised providing a brief view of either of a pair of stimuli. Subjects reared by their mothers pressed more to see animate than inanimate objects. With increasing age, the number of bar-pressing responses decreased for an adult female stimulus, increased for an age peer and for food, and remained low for geometric forms and an empty chamber. Maternally deprived subjects established uniformly low response levels to all stimuli.