A puzzling pause in infant suckling has no feeding function

Evidence

Nursing is one of the first activities of the newborn infant. Babies suck in a burst–pause pattern that appears to be unique among mammals, which continuously suck without pause (Sroufe & Waters, 1976). The pause is something of a mystery: There is no physiological reason for pauses—the infant breathes and swallows as it sucks, there is no difference between bottle-fed and breast-fed infants in pausing, and although bursts of sucking get shorter as the infant gets full, the pause duration remains constant. There is no apparent function for pausing. … The mother fits her behavior into the infant’s rhythms in order to enact the infant’s presumed autonomy. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 412

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modeled eating, not touching, licenses infant plant consumption — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 274