AUTHOR=Van Puyvelde Martine , Collette Laetitia , Gorissen An-Sofie , Pattyn Nathalie , McGlone Francis TITLE=Infants Autonomic Cardio- Respiratory Responses to Nurturing Stroking Touch Delivered by the Mother or the Father JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physiology VOLUME=10 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.01117 DOI=10.3389/fphys.2019.01117 ISSN=1664-042X ABSTRACT=
The building of physiological self-regulation during bonding is a crucial developmental process based on early cardio-respiratory maturation. The mother’s role as a facilitator of this physiological maturation has been evidenced and recognized in many respects. Research in fathers, however, remains sparse which may be due to the belief that bonding is a physiological behavior reserved for a mother’s maternal instinct. In the current study we compared the impact of paternal and maternal nurturing stroking touch on infants’ physiological self-regulation in terms of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA). We compared the impact of a 3-min stroking period (STROKING) with a pre-baseline (PRE-STROKING) and post-baseline (POST-STROKING) of 25 mothers and 25 fathers (unrelated to one another) on their infants, aged 4–16 weeks. We registered infant electrocardiogram (ECG) and respiration to calculate infant RR-interval (RRI), respiration rate (