Animal studies ATM Flashcards
animal studies
studies carried out on non-human animal species rather than on humans, either for ethical or practical reasons
imprinting
bird species that are mobile rom birth attach to and follow the first moving thing they see
What was Lorenz?
ethologist
When did Lorenz first observe imprinting?
when he was a child and a neighbour gave him a newly hatched duck which followed him around
Lorenz’s procedure
- Randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs
- Halfwere hatched in natural environment with mother
- Half hatched in incubator without mother but with Lorenz
Lorenz’s findings
- Incubator group followed Lorenz
- Control group followed mother
- Always continued to follow this person even when mixed up
- Imprinting
- There is a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place
sexual imprinting
Lorenz
Lorenz also investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences. For example, birds imprinted on humans would later display courtship behaviour towards humans.
* Case study about a peacock that had grown up in a reptile house of a zoo
* First moving object it saw was giant tortoises
* Peacock only displays courtship to tortoises
contact comfort
Harlow
Newborns kept alone often died but they usually survived if they were given something soft to cuddle
Harlow’s procedure
- The idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother was tested
- Reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’
- Milk was dispensed by either the plain wired mother or the cloth covered mother
Harlow’s findings
- Babies cuddled the soft mother and sought comfort in it when it was scared
- This was regardless of which mother dispensed milk
- ‘Contact comfort’ was more important to the moneys than food when it came to attachment
- Babies spent 22 hours a day with the comfort mother
maternally deprived monkeys as adults
**Harlow **followed monkeys who had been deprived of a ‘real’ mother into adulthood. Severe consequences were found as a result of the early maternal deprivation. The monkeys with a plain wired mother were most dysfunctional but even the other ones did not develop socially normal behaviour. They were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled at mating
CRITICAL PERIOD OF NORMAL DEVELOPMENT
Harlow conducted a critical period for attachment formation → 90 days
Bateson’s cube - a cost benefit analysis
The fuller the cube the more likely it is that the research will be agreed by an ethics committee and funded
Lorenz
Research support
strength
Existence of support for the imprinting concept
* Regolin and vallortigara support his ideas
* Chicks were exposed to shapes that moved
* A range of formations was showed and then the original very quickly
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
Lorenz
generalisability to humans
limitation
Problems with using Lorenz’s research to understand human behaviour.
* Mammalian attachment system is more complex for humans than birds
* Mammals is two-way process such as using interactional synchrony vs imprinting
Probably not appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas to humans.
