Animal Studies of Attachment Flashcards
What was Lorenz’s procedure?
He set up an experiment in which he divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment, and half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
What were Lorenz’s findings
The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, whereas the control group followed the mother. This is called imprinting, whereby bird species that are mobile from birth attach and follow the first moving thing that they see. He identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. Depending on the species that can be as brief as a few hours after hatching. if imprinting does not occur then the chicks will not have a mother figure
What is sexual imprinting?
He observed birds that imprinted on a human would later display courtship behaviour towards human. Lorenz described a peacock that was reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving thing it saw was a giant tortoise. This meant that it would only direct courtship behaviour towards tortoises.
What was Harlow’s procedure?
He tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. He reared 16 babies with two wire mothers. In one condition milk was dispensed by the wire mother whereas in the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth mother.
What were Harlow’s findings?
The babies cuddled the cloth-mother and sought comfort from the cloth mother when scared regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that contact comfort was more important than food when it came to forming attachments. Harlow also found a critical period of 90 days - after this time the damage was irreversible.
What was Harlows research into maternally deprived monkeys as adults?
They found severe consequences with the 16 rhesus monkeys - especially those reared with the wire mother. They were all aggressive and less sociable. They bred less and were unskilled at mating. When they became mothers, they neglected their young or attacked their children.
What is a strength of Lorenz’s research?
There is research support for the concept of imprinting. Vallortigara (1995) supports imprinting. Chicks were exposed to simple shape combinations that moved. A range of other shape combinations were moved in front of them, but they only followed the original combination. This supports the view that young animals are born with the ability to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window.
What is a limitation of Lorenz’s research?
It is difficult to generalise findings and conclusions to humans. In mammals attachment requires reciprocation from the mother, so it is not appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas to humans.
What is a strength of Harlow’s research?
It has Real-World Application. It helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development allowing them to intervene to prevent poor outcomes. This means that the value of his research is practical not just theoretical.
What is a limitation of Harlow’s research?
It is difficult to generalise these findings, despite the monkey brain being more similar to a human brain than a gosling, the human brain is still far more complicated.
