Animal studies Flashcards
what did Lorenz observe (1952)
he observed imprinting
what was the procedure to Lorenz’s’ research
-He randomly divided a group of geese eggs
-Half were hatched with their mother in their natural environment and the other half were put into an incubator and the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
what were the findings to Lorenz research
-The group that were hatched in the incubator followed Lorenz everywhere (the experimental group)
-The group that was hatched with the mother in their environment followed the mother around (control group)
-When the two groups were mixed they still split and followed who they first saw when they hatched
strengths for Lorenz research
-A strength for Lorenzo’s research is the existence of support for the concept of imprinting
who supports Lorenz’s theory of imprinting and what was their study
Lucia Regolin et al supports his study because he exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved e.g. a triangle in front of a rectangle. A range of combinations were then moved in front of that initial combination and they followed the original most closely
-this supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development as Lorenz had predicted
A limitation of Lorenz’s research
-It is difficult to generalise findings and conclusions from birds to humans
what did Harlow observe
He observed that newborns kept alone in bare cages often died but that they had usually survived if they had been given something soft to cuddle e.g. cloth
what was the procedure with Harlow’s experiment
-Harlow (1958) tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother
-In one of his experiments he reared 16 baby monkeys and he had two wire model ‘mothers’
-In one of the conditions milk was dispensed from the plain wire ‘mother’ whereas in a second condition the food dispensing mother was covered in a cloth
What were the findings in Harlow’s experiment
-He found that the baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the plain wire one even when it dispensed food
-This showed that contact comfort was more important to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour
what did Harlow conclude about the critical period
He concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation
A mother figure had to be introduced to the monkeys within 90 days for an attachment to have formed, after this an attachment is impossible and the damage done from early deprivation is irreversible
support for Harlow’s study
-Has good real world application
limitations of Harlow’s study
-The ability to generalise it to humans, even though Rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than Lorenz’s birds the human brain and human behaviour is still much more complex than that of monkeys
-There is also many ethical issues with this as it caused severe and long-term distress to the monkeys
