2.4. Animal Studies Flashcards
What was Lorenz’s study?
- Took a clutch of gosling eggs and divided into 2 groups
- 1 group with natural mother, 1 group put in an incubator
- Incubator -> first thing they see was Lorenz and they started following him about, mother group saw her first
- Labelled all of them up, then released them later in the lake - 1 group followed mother, incubator group followed Lorenz
What did Lorenz say animals are not born with?
A ready made image of parents
What did Lorenz say about imprinting?
- Bird species that are mobile from birth attach and follow the first moving object they see.
What is imprinting important for?
Short term protection and feeding
What is a critical period?
A period in which imprinting needs to take place, this can be within a few hours
What did Lorenz further state imprinting was important for?
- Long term mating -> studies have shown mate choice is related to early imprinting choices.
- A peacock reared in a reptile house at a zoo first saw a giant tortoise after hatching. As an adult, the peacock would only direct courtship behaviour towards the giant to to rise = sexual imprinting
Strength: Guiton
- Showed imprinting could be on yellow rubber gloves with chicks.
- He later found males tried to mate with the yellow glove later on.
Weakness: plastic
- Imprinting is plastic and forgiving mechanism
- Guiton found that he could reverse the imprinting of the glove on the chicks, if they later spent time with their own species.
- Now believed imprinting is like any other learning - it can take place rapidly and fairly reversible.
- Should take caution generalising animal behaviour to human behaviour
What was Harlow’s monkey study?
- He noticed when cage was cleaned, monkeys became distressed.
- The cages had sanitary pads at the bottom and the monkeys had become attached as a kind of “security blanket”
- Therefore, Harlow created two wire monkeys
- Once had a feeding bottle, the other a soft cloth but no food.
- Monkeys spent most time with the soft cloth mother and would cling to it, especially when frightened.
What were the long lasting effects of the monkeys in Harlow’s study?
- Continued research on motherless monkeys as they grew up to see whether maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
- He noted the the motherless monkeys developed abnormally
- They froze of fled when approached by other monkeys
- They didn’t show normal mating behaviour
- They bred less than normal monkeys
- As mothers, neglected young and some even attacked and killed them
What was the critical period in Harlow’s study?
A mother figure had to be introduced within 90 days for an attachment to form.
After this time it was impossible, early deprivation is irreversible.
Strength: explains some human behaviour
- Concept of imprinting can explain some human behaviour
- E.g. “baby duck syndrome” in which computer uses become attached to their first operating system.
- This means imprinting is a meaningful process in humans as well as birds.
Strength: practical value
- This research helped social workers to understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse, therefore to intervene and prevent it.
- Furthermore, it has helped attachment in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild for animals.
Weakness: Confounding variables
- Harlow lacks internal validity
- The two wired monkeys varied in other ways, the heads were different = a confounding variable
- Could be said that the infant monkey preferred the head on the cloth monkey
Weakness: generalising animal studies to human behaviour
- Humans differ in important ways to animals -> humans governed by conscious decisions
- That said, Schaffer and Emerson found infants were not most attached to feeder but to most responsive who interacted with them the most -> supports comfort rather than food
