Animal Studies Flashcards
Define ‘Animal studies’
studies that are carried out on non-human animal species rather than on humans - either for ethical/practical reasons - practical because animals breed faster and researchers are interested in seeing results across more than one generation of animals
What was the procedure for Lorenz’s Imprinting study
- set up classic experiment in 1935
- randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs
- half the eggs = hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment
- other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
What were the findings of Lorenz’s study
- the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere
- the control group (that hatched in front of mother) followed her
- when 2 groups were mixed up - the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz
Explain the phenomenon of ‘imprinting’
- bird species that are mobile from birth (eg; geese, ducks) attach to and follow the first moving object they see
- Lorenz identified a CRITICAL period in which imprinting needs to happen
- depending on species - this can be brief (eg; few hours) after hatching
- if imprinting doesn’t occur within that time Lorenz found that chicks didn’t attach themselves to a mother figure
Describe ‘sexual imprinting’
Adult mate preferences observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans
Give an example of sexual imprinting
Lorenz (1952) - peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where first moving objects the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises
- as an adult this bird would only show courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises
- ^^^ undergone sexual imprinting
Evaluation of Lorenz’s study - observations have been questioned
- imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour
- Guiton et al. (1966) found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves & would try to mate with them as adults… with that experience though they eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens
- suggests that = impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed
Eval of Lorenz - generalisability to humans
- interested in birds
- BUT… problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans
- the mammalian attachment system = quite different from that in birds
- eg: mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young that do birds & mammals may be able to form attachments at any time, albeit less easily than in infancy
What was the procedure of Harlow’s study
- Harlow (1958) tested idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother
- in 1 exp he reared 16 baby rhesus monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’
- in 1st condition = milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother
- in 2nd condition = milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother
What were the findings of Harlow’s study
- baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk
- showed = ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour
Describe the maternally deprived monkeys as adults
- Harlow et al. followed maternally deprived monkeys, if it had permanent effect?
- researchers found severe consequences
- monkeys reared with wire mothers only were the most dysfunctional; BUT even those reared with a soft toy as a substitute didn’t develop normal social behaviour
- they were more aggressive, less sociable, bred less often than typical monkey, unskilled at mating
- as mothers – some neglected their young and others attacked children (sometimes killing them)
Critical period for normal development
- like Lorenz, H concluded = was a critical period for this behaviour - a mother figure had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form
- after this time attachment was impossible, and damage done by early deprivation became irreversible
Eval: Harlow’s monkeys: theoretical value
- H showed that attachment doesn’t develop as the result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort
- H also showed = importance of quality of early relationships for later social development (incl. ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children)
Eval: Harlow’s monkeys: practical value
- research has helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse so intervene to prevent it (Howe 98)
- the findings are also important in the care of captive monkeys; now understand proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and also in breeding programmes in the wild
Eval: Harlow: Ethical issues
- faced severe criticism
- monkeys suffered a lot
- this species is considered similar enough to humans to be quite generalizable to the findings - which means their suffering was presumably quite human like
- Harlow = aware of the suffering he caused - he referred to the wire mothers as ‘iron maidens’ after a medieval torture device
- the counter-argument is that H’s research was sufficiently important to justify the effects
