Now here are 106's two mothers As you can see it was weaned on a wire mother

Here's baby 106 Watch

He's going to the wire mother Got to eat to live

He's going back He's back on the cloth mother and he'll stay

on the cloth mother Actually this baby spends 17-18 hours a day

on the cloth mother and less than 1 hour a day on the wire mother

We've predicted that the variable of contact comfort would be a variable of measurable

importance but we were unprepared to find that it completely

overwhelmed and overshadowed all other variables including those of nursing

Frankly doctor if it comes to a choice between wire and cloth it's reasonable to expect that

any child will go to the cloth as a matter of

creature comfort like a baby with its blanket But is this really love?

Well what do you mean by saying that a baby loves its mother?

Certainly one thing we mean is that it gets a great feeling of security in the presence

of the mother now Mr Collingwood, wouldn't you say that

if you frightened a baby that it went running to its mother

was comforted, and then all the fear disappeared and was replaced by a complete sense of security

that that baby loved its mother? Now in this experiment this is the apparatus

we use It looks diabolical

That's just the way the baby monkey feels about it

Blazing eyes, loud sounds, moving mechanical parts

all of these things are designed to frighten a monkey

Now here we have a peaceful, resting baby monkey

Lets find out what his reactions to his mother are

when we frighten him He's scared alright

and he does what any child will do in a similar situation

he runs away it's more than running away

he was running to his mother to touch her to drive away his fear

contact with the mother changes his entire personality

Look, now he's actually threatening the diabolical object

Alright, this gives us part of the picture of the strength of infantile love

This is a six foot square room with a few toys and other objects

but to the monkey it's much more menacing we know that when our own children are taken

to a strange place without their mothers they are often overwhelmed with fear

this room is just such a new and strange environment for the baby monkeys

No mother is in there, now lets put a monkey into the room

Notice how cautiously he enters the room He's searching for comfort but nothing relieves

his disturbance Now we'll take the baby monkey out and put

in a wire mother Now this one was nursed by a wire mother?

That's right, all his life She doesn't seem to help much

Now we'll try the same test with a cloth mother in the room

You see the contrast in the behaviour? Despite the fact that the wire mother nursed

him, she could offer this infant nothing in the way of affection or security

but here the monkey by rubbing against the cloth mother

as if he were seeking as much contact comfort as he could get

builds up his reservoir of affection and security first his body relaxes

as the fear disappears but above and beyond this, new positive response

patterns appear He now goes out to explore and investigate

this new strange world he is now a normal, happy, curious baby