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The Human Significance Of Skin Essay

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THE HUMAN SIGNIFICANCE OF SKIN

Skin is often over looked and under appreciated by all of us. We live our lives habitually without realizing what an amazing and important role skin plays in our every day routine. Our skin protects us from many things, keeps us informed of our surroundings and makes us aware of many dangers present. The sense of touch is our most developed feeling and the predecessor of all of our other senses. The author gives several examples on how we have incorporated our sense of touch to our colloquial language as an expression of just how much we use our skin. But our skin may serve more purposes than those of protection and information. Through several experiments it has been …show more content…

The first one was made out of terry cloth and was warm and soft. The second one was made out of wire and carried the milk that would feed the monkeys. Monkeys responded to the stimuli of the terry cloth mother in such a way that it overshadowed the purpose of mother?s milk and put close contact as the main principle of nursing. The infant monkeys were expected to be conditioned to the wire monkey and respond to their instinct of survival first. But the study showed that the monkeys valued tactile stimulation more than they did nourishment, preferring to cling to the mothers that provided them with warmth and physical contact.

* Social Learning: A theory that learning occurs through observation and imitation of others.
* Parent-newborn bond: The strong feelings of attachment that arise between parents and their newborn infants.

When a baby is born, a mother is born as well. Harlow observed in the monkeys that the need from the mother to have intimate contact with the newborn was greater than the newborn?s need for contact with the mother. In the human mother, the parent-newborn bond is much stronger than in the other mammals serving the purpose of arresting post-partum depression, contraction of the uterus,

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