Environmental and genetic determinants of sensorimotor asymmetries in mother-infant interaction

Malatesta, Gianluca; Marzoli, Daniele; Tommasi, Luca

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2022.1080141

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 83 publications

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“…Interestingly, similar arguments, starting from Michel's theories, have recently been associated with the infant cradling side and implemented in a double‐function model of the early mother‐infant asymmetrical interaction. Here, left cradling is considered as part of a wider environmental framework, thus representing a genuine maternal effect provoking cascading effects on the infant's development (Boulinguez‐Ambroise et al., 2021, 2022; Malatesta, Marzoli & Tommasi, 2020; Malatesta, Marzoli, Apicella, et al., 2020; Malatesta, Marzoli, Morelli, Pivetti & Tommasi, 2021; Malatesta, Marzoli, Prete & Tommasi, 2021; Malatesta, Manippa & Tommasi, 2022; Malatesta, Marzoli & Tommasi, 2022).…”

Section: Universal Left‐side Preference For Cradlingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Handedness as a major determinant of lateral bias in human functional cradling

van der Meer

2023

Infancy

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Studies examining infant cradling have almost uniformly concluded with a general human left‐side bias for cradling, indicating that people prefer to hold an infant to the left of their body. Explanations for the notion of the left‐side cradling bias have traditionally been searched for in a variety of factors, for example, in terms of maternal heartbeat, genetic factors, in the form of an ear asymmetry where auditory information is perceived faster through the left ear, as a result of a right hemispheric functional specialization for perception of emotions and faces, and in identifying a motor bias of the infant, such as the tendency of newborn infants to lie with the face to the right when placed supine. Interestingly, handedness is generally considered an inadequate explanation for the lateralized cradling bias, despite it being an intuitively plausible one. In this brief review, I put forward the cradler's handedness as the most convincing and elegant determinant of the cradling bias. This explanation is consistent with a developmental cascades' framework where the cradling bias can be understood as the result of a multitude of factors across a range of levels and systems.

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