Parturient Women Can Recognize Their Infants by Touch

This article shows that parturient women can identify their newborns by tactile cues alone and that the discriminative features are learned, without intent, during routine mother-infant interactions. To test for touch recognition, mothers were instructed to stroke the hand (dorsal surface) of 3 newborns, 1 of which was her own. She then guessed which of the 3 was her own infant. The results showed that the majority of women were successful at the task if they had been with their infant for 1 hr or more since childbirth. Control experiments showed that the discrimination was not based on olfactory or other nontactile cues. It was concluded that during routine mother-infant contact, mothers learn the unique tactile features of their infant's skin and use these cues for individual recognition.