Mother Chimps Crucial for Offspring's Social Skills

19th September, 2013

20 September 2013, Newsletter, OT, SLP, Social Skills

[Source: Science Daily]

Orphaned chimpanzees are less socially competent than chimpanzees who were reared by their mother. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, observed that orphaned chimpanzees frequently engaged in social play, but their play bouts were much shorter and resulted in aggression more often. Apparently, chimpanzee mothers endow their offspring with important social skills.

It may not come as a surprise, but mother chimpanzees seem to be important for the development of social skills in young chimpanzees. “Orphaned chimpanzees had more difficulties to successfully coordinate their social play interactions,” says Edwin van Leeuwen from the Comparative Cognitive Anthropology Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. “Since social play comprises a complex context in which signals about intentions need to be communicated, it seems that orphaned chimpanzees have missed out on valuable lessons from their mothers.”
Read the Rest of this Article on Science Daily

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