Animal Studies

Question 1

Animal Studies:

Answer 1

Carried out on non-human animal species rather than on humans, either for practical or ethical reasons. Practical because animals breed faster and researchers are interested in seeing results across more than one generation.

Question 2

Imprinting: Aims and Procedure

Answer 2

1. Lorenz observed the phenomenon of imprinting when he was a child and a neighbour gave him a newly hatched duckling that followed him around.
2. He set up a classic experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs.
3. Half of the eggs hatched with the mother goose in a natural environment.
4. Half of the them hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.

Question 3

Imprinting: Findings

Answer 3

1. The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed their mother.
2. When the 2 groups were mixed up the experimental group still followed Lorenz and the control group still followed the mother.
3. Imprinting: bird species are mobile from birth attach to follow moving object they see.
4. He identified a critical period where imprinting needs to takes place, can be as brief as a few hours.
5. If imprinting does not occur, the chicks did not attach to a mother figure.

Question 4

Sexual Imprinting:

Answer 4

1. Birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans.
2. Case study Lorenz (1952) described a peacock had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving objects they saw were giant tortoises.
3. As an adult the bird would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises.

Question 5

Harlow: Procedure

Answer 5

1. Harlow (10958) tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother.
2. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model mothers.
3. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother, whereas in a second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother.

Question 6

Harlow (1958): Findings

Answer 6

1. 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.
2. This showed ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

Question 7

Maternally deprived monkeys as adults:

Answer 7

1. He wanted to see if this early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
2. Those reared with wire mothers only were the most dysfunctional
3. Soft toy monkeys did not develop normal social behaviour and both were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical being unskilled at mating.
4. As mothers some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and other attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.

Question 8

Critical period: monkeys

Answer 8

1. A mother had to be introduced within 90 days for an attachment to form.
2. Beyond this point attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.

Question 9

E: Generalisability to Humans

Answer 9

1. Some of his findings have influenced our understanding of human development, there is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans.
2. Mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young than do birds, and mammals may be able to form attachments at any age, but less easily than in infancy.
3. Not appropriate to generalise to humans.

Question 10

E: Some of Lorenz’s observations have been questioned

Answer 10

1. The idea that imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour.
   2.Guiton et al. 1966 found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults, but that with experience they eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens.
2. Mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.

Question 11

E: Theoretical Value

Answer 11

1. Had a profound effect on psychologists’ understanding of human mother-infant attachment.
2. Showed that attachment does not develop as the result of being fed by a mother but as a result of contact comfort.
3. Also showed importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children.

Question 12

E: Practical Reasons

Answer 12

1. Helped important applications in a range of practical contexts.
2. Helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it. (Howe 1998).
3. Important for the care of captive monkeys; we now understand the importance of proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild.

Question 13

E: Ethical Issues

Answer 13

1. Monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow’s procedures.
2. This species is considered similar enough to humans to be able to generalise the findings, which suffering was presumably quite human-like.
3. Harlow himself was aware of the suffering he caused, he referred to the wire mothers as ‘iron maidens’ after a medieval torture device.
4. Could argue his research was important enough to justify the effects.