Thumbsucking Dummies Pacifiers Mammalian Imprinting

Thumbsucking Dummies Pacifiers Imprinting

QUOTED FROM: The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry (2007) 41 (Supp.2) Page:A351

"Title:Thumbsucking and Mammalian One-Teat Preference
Author: Elsie Mobbs

"The logical flaws in the current explnations of fixated thumbsucking are:
1. The need to suck: This does not explain why infants fixate on one sucking object, one digit out of ten, and will refuse replacement sucking objects.
2. Hunger: there is no nutrition in thumbs and thumbsucking will also9 occur after feeds.
3: It is necessary normal development: Margaret Mead, anthropologist, noted that in societies where babies have free access to the breast then thumbsucking does not occur.
4. It does no harm: Skin excoriation and facial malocclusions which occur are not uncommon problems resulting from thumbsucking,
5. It occurs as part of learning: The emotional fixation on the one chosen sucking object, self-sucking, is mirrored across the mammalian spectrum if animals are human reared.
. . . The phenomenon of mammalian oral imprinting is a better explanation for thumbsucking."