Animal Studies - Attachment Flashcards
What was the aim of Lorenz’s study ?
To assess the mechanisms of imprinting In mother - infant birds
What is imprinting in this example of the geese ?
that geese automatically attach to the first moving thing they see after hatching and follow it everywhere
What was the procedure of Lorenz’s study ?
- randomly divided a clutch or greylag goose eggs into 2 groups
- left one group with the mother and incubated the other eggs
- Lorenz observed that the goslings from the incubator eggs followed him around In exactly the same way that the goslings from the other eggs would follow their mother
- he put both sets of goslings together and observed that when they were released the two groups quickly reformed as the goslings went off I search of their respective ‘mothers’
- both sets of goslings had imprinted on the first moving object that they had seen
What did Lorenz further discover after further experiments ?
- determined that imprinting was most likely between 13-16 hours after hatching
- concluded that = imprinting seems to occur during a critical period —> fast and automatic process
- after this critical period it’s too late for the young birds to ever imprint
- unlikely to occur in humans —-> our attachments take longer to develop and we don’t automatically attach to particular things
What were the two groups involved in the study and what was carried out in the group ?
- control group = half the eggs were hatched in their natural environment with their mother present
- experimental group = half of the eggs hatched were in an incubator with Lorenz present
Why did Lorenz make two different groups ?
- to study immediate imprinting all goslings released and the parent they followed was recorded
- to study long term effects of maternal deprivation of the geese when their progress into adulthood is monitored
What was the conclusion of the experiment ?
critical period -if Imprinting does not occur within the time goslings did not attach themselves onto a parental figure
- imprinting gives an evolutionary advantage as it increases the chimes of survival because a younger animal following its aren’t is more likely to be :
- be safe from predators
- be fed
- learn how to find food
What is imprinting ?
The tendency to form an attachment to the first large moving object seen after birth
What is sexual imprinting ?
- investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult male preferences
- the nitre they had imprinted on human layer displayed courtship behaviours towards humans
- case study (1952)
What was Harlows experiment called ?
Harlow (1959) - the need for ‘contact comfort ‘
What was harlows aim ?
To Investigate if attachment is based on the feeding bond between a mother and infant as predicted by the learning theory
What was the procedure of harlows experiment ?
- aimed to find out whether baby monkeys would prefer a source of food or source of comfort and protection as a attachment figure
- in laboratory experiments rhesus monkeys were raised in isolation
- they had two surrogate mothers
- one was made of wire mesh and contained a feeding bottle
- the other was made of cloth but didn’t contain a feeding bottle
What were the results of his experiment ?
- monkeys spent most of their time clinging to the cloth surrogate and only used the wire surrogate to feed
- cloth surrogate seemed to give them comfort in new situations
- when the monkeys grew up they showed signs of social and emotional disturbance
- females were bad mothers who were often violent towards their offspring
What was the conclusion of Harlows experiment ?
- Infant monkeys formed more of an attachment with a figure that provided comfort and protection
- growing up In isolation affected their development
What was the evaluation points of this experiment ?
- Lab experiment = strict control variables = means that it’s unlikely the results were affected by an unknown variable
- you can’t generalise the results of this study to human being’s because humans and monkeys are qualitatively different
- ethical problems - monkeys were put in a stressful situation and later showed signs of being psychologically damaged by the experiment
- monkeys are social animals so it was unfair to keep them in isolation
- isolation = the study lacked ecological validity —-> monkeys weren’t in their natural environment —> results can’t be reliably applied to real life
- laboratory experiments can usually be replicated but ethical guidelines now in place mean that you couldn’t repeat this study today to see whether you’d get the same results
