And those behaviors—licking and grooming in the rats, responding sensitively to infants’ cues in the humans—seem to have had a powerful and long-lasting effect on the children’s outcomes in a variety of similar ways: the human and rat babies who received the extra dose of early care were, later on, more curious, more self-reliant, calmer, and better able to deal with obstacles. The early nurturing attention from their mothers had fostered in them a resilience that acted as a protective buffer against stress.
