Research results show that babies use 'saliva' as a clue to distinguish between human intimacy



Correctly understanding the relationships that surround you is an important skill for a human being as a social being, even for babies who cannot live without someone's care. A study conducted by an American research team reported that 'babies recognize intimacy between humans by using saliva exchange as a clue.'

Early concepts of intimacy: Young humans use saliva sharing to infer close relationships

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abh1054

Babies can tell who has close relationships based on one clue: saliva
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-01-babies-relationships-based-clue-saliva.html

There is a distinction in the intimacy of relationships in human society, and anthropologists have observed that 'exchange of body fluids such as saliva' is welcomed among intimate people such as families and lovers. Ashley Thomas, lead author of the paper and postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, 'Is this a clue as to whether babies make a relationship distinction and whether saliva exchange is a clue to the relationship? It led to two questions. '

To find out if the baby uses saliva as a clue in recognizing the relationship, Thomas et al.'S research team 'showed the baby the interaction between a human actor and a doll, and the baby for subsequent events. We conducted an experiment called 'Observing the reaction of.'



In the first experiment, two actors showed two different interactions to one doll: 'sharing oranges together and eating' or 'throwing balls'. Next, he showed the doll suffering between the two actors sitting in the chair, and observed which actor the baby would see. Past studies in non-human primates have observed a tendency that 'when a baby monkey is crying, the individual in the herd looks at the parent of the baby monkey in hopes of help', again based on that tendency. The baby was thought to 'see an actor who is more intimate with the doll and can expect help.'

As a result of the experiment, it was found that it is highly possible that the baby sees 'the actor who shared and ate the orange together' when the doll began to suffer. It was suggested that the baby would be more intimate with the person who shared the food than with the person who threw the ball at each other.

In the next experiment, one actor was assigned to the two dolls, and the test focused more on 'saliva'. In the experiment, the actor was shown to the baby doing the act of 'putting the finger in the mouth and then putting it in the doll's mouth' or 'putting the finger on the forehead and then putting it on the doll's forehead'. Next, I showed the actor standing between the two puppets performing a distressing performance and observed which puppet the baby was looking at. As a result, the researchers reported that babies were more likely to look at dolls that shared saliva by 'putting their fingers in their mouths and then into the doll's mouth.'



The results of this study suggest that saliva sharing is a clue for babies to learn about their own and their social relationships. 'General skills to learn social relationships are very important,' said Thomas, and distinguishing relationships is difficult for babies who need to be cared for by adults for a longer period of time than other species. Claims to be important for survival.

In addition, this experiment was conducted both face-to-face and Zoom before and after the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19), and the same results were obtained in both cases, so the results were not affected by the pandemic. The research team said.

in Science, Posted by log1h_ik