You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The effects of infantile stimulation upon subsequent adult behavior having established itself as a popular area of research in animal psychology, it was reasonable to expect that one of the next subjects in the developmental spectrum to be taken up for investigation would be the study of the consequences of stimulating pregnant animals upon their offspring. The expectation has materialized.
A perfunctory search of the literature turned up a number of articles and abstracts dealing with prenatal stimulation. A variety of treatments of pregnant animals have been used: sodium bromide (Hamilton17), barbiturates (Armitage2), alcohol (Vincent38), testosterone propionate (Phoenix, Goy, Gerall, and Young;25 Gerall12), epinephrine (Young42), adrenalin (W. R. Thompson and Olian;37 W. R. Thompson, Goldenberg, J. Watson, and M. Watson36), adre-nalectomy (Havlena and Werboff19), intraperitoneal injection of distilled water and saline solution (Havlena and Werboff18), X-rays (Furchgott and Echols;11 Meier;22 Werboff, Havlena and Sikov40), audiogenic seizures (W. D. Thompson and Sontag34), crowding (Keeley21), and stress situations (W. R. Thompson;35 Doyle and Yule;6 Hockman;20 Ader and Belfer;1 Weier and DeFreis39).
The two domains of prenatal and infantile stimulation were joined recently in a pioneer experiment by Denenberg and Whimbey.5 Their results showed that the handling of the mother in her infancy