Animal Studies

Question 1

Lorenz (1952) procedure:

Answer 1

• demonstrated the concept of imprinting (when animals attach to the first moving thing they see after birth).
• he took a clutch of Golding eggs and divided them into 2 groups. 1 with biological mother and 1 incubated.
• he filmed his observations

Question 2

Lorenz findings and conclusions:

Answer 2

• he labelled them all up and released them into the lake.
• the mother group imprinted on the mother and followed her around
• the incubator group imprinted on Lorenz and followed him around (and swam after him etc)
  Conclusion: imprinting must occur in a critical period of attachment (13-16 hours after birth) Consequences of failure to form attachment are irreversible.

Question 3

+ support for imprinting guiton (ao3 Lorenz)

Answer 3

• showed that imprinting isn’t specific to living things and can be done on yellow rubber gloves.
• he found that male goslings that imprinted on yellow rubber gloves later tried to mate with the yellow rubber glove (early imprinting is linked to reproductive behaviour)

Question 4

— imprinting can be reversed (ao3 Lorenz)

Answer 4

• like other learning imprinting takes place rapidly and can be reversed. As found when spending more time with their own species can reverse the effect of false imprinting e.g the rubber glove.

Question 5

— generalising from birds to humans (ao3)

Answer 5

• take caution when generalising birds to animals as they are very different both psychologically and physiologically.
• humans are driven by conscious decision making.

Question 6

Harlow procedure:

Answer 6

• Harlow noticed that monkeys became distressed when their cages were cleaned out as they’d gotten attached to a sanitary pad in the bottom of their cage.
• he made two surrogate mothers to test this theory, one made of cloth that didn’t dispense milk and one made of mesh wire that did dispense milk.

Question 7

Harlow findings and conclusions:

Answer 7

• found that when the monkeys were scared, they clung to the cloth mother for comfort.
• they only went to the mesh mother when hungry.
• found that comfort is more important than food when forming attachments.
• critical period = 90days

Question 8

+ real-world practical value (ao3)

Answer 8

• helpful for social workers to understand risk factors in child neglect so they can intervene and prevent it.
• also helpful for zoos in breeding programmes

Question 9

— generalising from monkey to human (ao3)

Answer 9

• humans are governed by conscious decision making so caution must be taking when generalising from animals to humans.

Question 10

— ethical issues (ao3)

Answer 10

• creating long lasting harm for monkeys (difficulty socialising, peer rejection) is unethical, however the cost outweighs the benefit.

Question 11

— confounding variable (ao3)

Answer 11

• the surrogate mothers had different heads so the monkey could’ve preferred the cloth head over the mesh.