Laterality of Cradling in Relation to Perception and Expression of Facial Affect

Abstract

A dominant leftward cradling bias has been observed in women in non feeding interaction with infants. Reasons for this behavior have been sought in behavioral asymmetries, but none have sufficiently justified the presence of this leftward pattern. Recently, the cradling bias has been linked to affective processing, considered to be a specialized function of the nondominant (right) hemisphere (Manning & Chamberlain, 1990). This study investigates Manning and Chamberlain's (1990) suggestions that a relationship exists between leftward cradling and the interpretation and expression of affect. Eighty-six nulliparous women were tested for this relationship by correlating direction of cradling bias with visual field dominance for perception of facially expressed emotion and expression of affect. No significant relationship was found to directly support the hypotheses.

Is infant holding‐side bias related to motor asymmetries in mother and child?

“…The link between hemispheric specialization in the perception of emotions and infant holding was found not to be significant in a population of mother-child dyads, regardless of the period. These results are consistent with findings for other populations of mothers (Donnot & Vauclair, 2007;Vauclair & Scola, 2009), but not for the general population (e.g., Bourne & Todd, 2004;Harris et al, 2001;Huggenberger et al, 2009;Lucas, Turnbull, & Kaplan-Solms, 1993;Vauclair & Donnot, 2005).…”

Posture and laterality in human and non-human primates: Asymmetries in maternal handling and the infant's early motor asymmetries

“…the left) of the mother is visible to him/her. This appealing explanation of left cradling has, however, not been confirmed in the investigations conducted by Lucas, Turnbull and Kaplan-Solms (1993). No relation was found between cradling and the perception and expression of emotions.…”

“…Several explanations have been provided to explain the leftward tendency for cradling. Thus, in order to investigate Manning and Chamberlain's (1990) suggestion that a relationship exists between the right hemisphere specialization for emotional processing and leftward cradling (see above), Lucas, Turnbull and Kaplan-Solms (1993) tested 86 nulliparous female students. They divided the testing procedure into three stages.…”

The Leftward Cradling Bias and Prosody: An Investigation of Cradling Preferences in the Deaf Community

“…Taken together with the findings of the present study, these data are not consistent with Sieratzki and Woll's (1996) suggestion that women cradle to the left to enhance auditory communication between themselves and the infant. Viewed in the more general context of other failures to find evidence that accords with the hemispheric asymmetry account (Lucas et al, 1993;Matheson & Turnbull, 1998;Turnbull & Lucas, 2000;Turnbull & Matheson, 1996;Turnbull, Stein, & Lucas, 1995), there appears to be little support for the claim that humans cradle leftward because of the right hemisphere's specialization for the perception and expression of emotion.…”

“…Several attempts have been made to test the hypothesis that lateral biases in vision are important in determining the lateral cradling preference, with respect to both the visual perception and expression of emotion (Lucas, Turnbull, & Kaplan-Solms, 1993) and lateral biases in visual attention (Turnbull & Lucas, 1996). Neither investigation successfully showed a link between the two lateralized phenomena.…”