Infant recognition by tactile cues

We previously showed that parturient women can recognize their newborn by stroking their infant's hand. Control experiments showed that the discrimination was tactile. In this experiment, we asked whether the women's skill was generalizable to other parts of the infant's body. Each subject was tested twice, once for touch recognition of her infant's hand and once for recognition of her infant's cheek. In both trials, the women were instructed to stroke the target area of 3 newborns and then to guess which of the infants was her own. Results show that the women succeeded at both recognition tasks. These data corroborate our previous findings and underscore mother's sensitivity to her infant's unique tactile features. We propose that their talent at "knowing" their infant by touch is an adaptive skill, beneficial to both mother and infant.