Animal Studies: Contact Comfort Research Flashcards
Who conducted research into ‘contact comfort’?
Harry Harlow.
When did Harlow conduct his research?
1959.
What did Harlow aim to investigate?
That attachment was not based on the feeding bond between mother and infant (learning theory).
What type of experiment did Harlow use?
Laboratory experiment.
How many monkeys did Harlow study?
8 baby monkeys.
What were the two conditions?
1) Milk was dispensed from a plain wire monkey (mother).
2) No milk was dispensed by a cloth-covered monkey (mother).
How long were the monkey studied for?
165 days.
What did Harlow observe?
How much time each monkey spent with the mother and how much they cried for their biological mother.
How the monkeys responded to being frightened and new environments.
What did Harlow do to study the long term effects?
He followed the monkeys into adulthood to see if maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
What did Harlow find?
That all eight monkeys spent most of their time with the cloth-covered mother.
What did Harlow find when the monkeys were frightened?
The monkeys would show attachment behaviours towards the cloth-covered mother,
What did Harlow find when the monkeys were in an alien environment?
The monkeys were willing to explore when the cloth-covered mother was present and showed phobic responses when the feeding mother was present.
What long-term effects did Harlow find?
The monkeys developed abnormally; they were more aggressive, less social, they would flee or freeze when approached by other monkeys, they bred less than other monkeys.
When the monkeys became mothers, they would neglect their young; they would attack or even kill them.
What did Harlow find about the critical period?
That a mother had to be introduced to the infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form or else attachment was impossible and the damage is irreversible.
What did Harlow conclude?
That monkeys valued comfort over the ability of the mother to provide food.
