Animal Studies: Imprinting Research Flashcards
Who conducted research into ‘imprinting’?
Konrad Lorenz.
When did Lorenz conduct his study?
1935.
What did Lorenz aim to investigate?
Mother-infant attachment in Greylag Geese.
What type of experiment did Lorenz conduct?
A laboratory experiment.
How did Lorenz divide the geese into the conditions?
Random allocation (Independent Groups Design).
What was the control group?
Half of the gosling eggs were left with the mother in their natural environment.
What was the experimental group?
The other half of the gosling eggs were placed in an incubator and when they hatched, the first moving object that they saw was Lorenz.
What did Lorenz do to test the effects of imprinting?
He marked the two groups to distinguish them and placed them together.
What did Lorenz do to study any long term effects?
He followed the geese into adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
What did Lorenz find about the control group?
The geese followed their biological mother closely.
What did Lorenz find about the experimental group?
The geese followed Lorenz closely and formed a rapid attachment with him as if he was their mother.
What happened after Lorenz put all the geese together?
He found that they separated to go to their respective ‘mothers’.
What did Lorenz note about the process of imprinting?
That it is irreversible and long-lasting.
What did Lorenz find additionally that the process of imprinting caused?
Imprinting had an effect on later mate preferences, called sexual imprinting.
What did Lorenz discover about imprinting?
A critical period where imprinting must occur.
