Animal attachments Flashcards
Imprinting
An innate ability to develop a strong bond with the mother which takes place during a specific time in development, most likely in the first few hours after hatching.
If a bond isn’t formed during this time, it probably wont ever happen
Contact comfort
physical contact with a caregiver that can provide physical + emotional comfort.
Lorenz (1935)
Procedure:
-Randomly selected goose eggs which would be placed in an incubator and ones that would be left with their natural mother.
-When hatched, the first thing the goslings saw was either their natural mother or lorenz.
-He placed both groups of goslings together in the presence of himself + their natural mother: the goslings quickly divided themselves, one following their natural mother and the others towards lorenz.
-The goslings who saw Lorenz first quickly imprinted on him + had no recognition of their natural mother.
Findings + conclusion
Findings:
-Imprinting had to take place during the critical period, if the gosling wasn’t exposed to a moving object during this time, imprinting wouldn’t occur.
Conclusions:
-Animals can imprint on a present moving object seen within its first 2 days.
-Imprinting is irreversible + long lasting.
-Had an effect on later mating preference, they’d choose a mate similar to an object they imprinted on
AO3 LORENZ
His conclusion that imprinting was irreversible and long-lastinng was questioned by other psychologists.
Guilton et al (1966)- found chickens had imprinted on yellow rubber gloves used for feeding.
The male chickens had later on tried to mate with rubber glove BUT over time they eventually learned to prefer their own species.
Therefore, suggests that Lorenz’s study on imprinting has shown to be reversible + the impact of it wasn’t permanent.
Harlow (1959)
-Studied 8 infant monkeys for 165 days to see which artificial mother they’d get attached to.
-Each monkey was placed in a wire cage with 2 wire mothers: one made out of cloth which provided comfort + the other made of wire that provided food.
-To measure the level attachment, he measured the amount of time each monkey spent with each mother.
Harlow’s findings
Findings:
-Found that all the monkeys spent the most time with the cloth mother who provided comfort (17 hours a day).
-Spent a short amount of time with wire mother, but only to feed off it and return to the cloth mother
-When frightened all the monkeys clung to the cloth mother, saw it as a ‘safe base’
Long-term effects
Long-term effects:
-the monkeys developed abnormally.
-Froze or fled when approached by other monkeys.
-Showed abnormal mating behaviour + wouldn’t cradle their own babies.
-Found a critical period for attachment to form: if motherless monkeys spent time w/ others before 3 months of age, they were able to recover; monkeys who spent 6 months w/ wire mother= didn’t recover
Conclusion
Attachment develops through contact comfort rather than feeding.
AO3 HARLOW
Ethically unacceptable.
When put back with their own species, they were unable to socially interact with others normally + displayed abnormal mating behaviour: long-term stress + poor development of the monkeys.–> long lasting emotional harm.
BUT some may argue that the knowledge gained from this study outweighs the unethical nature of it as it’s assisted in the understanding of attachments forming + paved the way for future research surrounding attachment e.g. highlighted the need for new-borns to have skin-to-skin contact with caregiver to aid in attachment.
