The aim of this research is to study the effects of early experience on adult mothering behavior, and also to identify the attributes and behaviors that provide an intermediate link between early experience and behavior in adulthood. Dr. Fairbanks is investigating these important problems using a colony of captive vervet monkeys living in four social groups at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Nonhuman Primate Research Facility. Results from undisturbed, captive social groups can provide good models of behavior in expanding populations with an ample resource base and low death rate. These conditions might have greater generality to some aspects of human behavior than conditions found in more stable or declining field populations. Preliminary results from Dr. Fairbanks' colony suggest that female vervet monkeys who were overly protected as infants become overly protective mothers, while females who were rejected more often as infants tend to be more rejecting as mothers. There are also indications that laissez-faire mothers produce offspring who are more independent, adventuresome, and responsive to the outside environment as juveniles and adults, compared to the offspring of more protective mothers. The objective of Dr. Fairbanks' further research is to verify these relationships between early experience and later behavior with a larger sample of individuals, and to determine how early experience influences an individual's ability to react adaptively to its environment. This research represents the first extensive study of the long-term effects of spontaneously occurring variation in early experience for primates living in naturally composed social groups. The results will allow Dr. Fairbanks to trace the developmental course of differences in early experience from infancy through adulthood, and to test the hypothesis that mothering style tends to be propagated from one generation of females to another.
