Animal Studies Of Attachment

Question 1

What are animal studies?

Answer 1

• Psychologists frequently study non human species to be able to understand human behaviour. Mammals seem to share a number of behaviours in relation to attachments between found and adults and we can make comparisons with human behaviours. Study of animals may be done because it is unethical to carry out on humans.

Question 2

Lorenz’s imprinting phenomenon

Answer 2

• In many species the young are pre social which means they are independently mobile from birth. We see this in many birds and herding animals.
• Imprinting is a part of the process of forming an attachment with the parent animal.

Question 3

Lorenz’s Aim

Answer 3

• To conduct a study on imprinting.

Question 4

Lorenz’s Procedure

Answer 4

• Randomly divided a clutch of Greylag goose eggs. Half were hatched normally with the mother bird and half in an incubator. Upon hatching the incubated goslings followed Lorenz around because he made sure he was the first object they saw. The other half of the clutch followed the natural mother.

Question 5

Lorenz’s Findings

Answer 5

• When Lorenz put all the goslings together they became agitated and quickly sought their respective mothers - Lorenz’s own infants searching for and following him, the rest searching for the mother goose. For the geese to learn to swim Lorenz had to get into a pond himself and swim off so they would follow him and start swimming.

Question 6

Lorenz’s Conclusion

Answer 6

• Lorenz established that following an instinctive behaviour and that there was a critical period for imprinting to take place. Usually occurs between 13-16 hours after hatching. After this the mechanism seemed to switch off and the chicks would wander aimlessly and not become attached.

Question 7

What is sexual imprinting?

Answer 7

• Geese who had originally imprinted on a human would try to mate with a human once they had reached sexual maturity. Lorenz described a case study of a peacock in a zoo that had imprinted on a tortoise as a chick, the peacock attempted to mate with the tortoise.

Question 8

Evaluation of Lorenz’s Research - practical applications

Answer 8

• Although human infants do not imprint, Lorenz’s ideas about critical periods for forming attachments have been carried over to human infants through the work of developmental psychologists in areas such as language acquisition.
• If children are not exposed to spoken language before they reach the age of around 11 years they rarely develop normal language skills. Bowlby also believed that there was a critical period in which human attachments should ideally be formed.
• Strength - his ideas have had led to a a better understanding of when human attachments should be formed.

Question 9

Evaluation of Lorenz’s research - research support for imprinting

Answer 9

• Later researchers have found support for Lorenz’s theory of imprinting.
• Guiton demonstrates that leghorn chicks exposed to a yellow rubber gloves when feeding them in the first few weeks became imprinted on the gloves.
• Strength - demonstrates that chicks do imprint on the first thing they see adding validity to the imprinting theory.

Question 10

Evaluation of Lorenz’s research - generalisability to human

Answer 10

• Human species are very different to birds and the imprinting process does not really explain human attachments.
• Geese are precocial and human infants are not. For survival it makes sense that precocial species quickly imprint on the mother otherwise they would perish.
• Weakness - we can not generalise from geese to humans in a meaningful way to explain how human attachments are formed.

Question 11

Evaluation of Lorenz’s research - ethical issues

Answer 11

• Ethically Lorenz may be criticised because his researched changed the normal course of development for the chicks that attached to him.
• He did go out of his way to teach them to behave like normal geese but they might have fared better with a natural mother.
• Weakness - he may have caused the geese long term damage as when they have to return to their mothers they will not be able to attach.

Question 12

Harrows cupboard love theory

Answer 12

• Influenced by a theory that infants form attachments to the adults who feeds them - attachments being a secondary consequence of feeding.

Question 13

Harlow’s Aim

Answer 13

• Harlow wanted to investigate that he noticed that round rhesus monkeys left alone without a mother quickly died, but if given something to cuddle were more likely to survive,

Question 14

Harlow’s Procedure

Answer 14

• Conducted lab experiments on infant rhesus monkeys taken from their mothers soon after birth.
• Placed in cages with a wire surrogate mother with a feeding bottle attached and a soft cloth mother without a feeding bottle.

Question 15

Harlow’s Findings

Answer 15

• The monkeys spent nearly all the time clinging to the cloth mothers and only approached the wire mothers to get milk. Once they were full they returned to the cloth mother.

Question 16

Harlow’s Findings

Answer 16

• The monkeys formed attachments with the cloth mother and she was a slice of contact comfort and safety if they became frightened. It appeared that emotional comfort was more important than feeding for attachment formation.

Question 17

What is the critical period for normal development?

Answer 17

• Harlow found a critical period for attachment of 90 days. If the infants were not provided with a comforting mother figure within this time they would not attach and the damage of privation was irreversible.

Question 18

What are maternally deprived moneys in adults?

Answer 18

• When these were introduced to normally reared monkeys their abnormal behaviours became apparent.
• Maternally deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable.
• Often attacked by normal monkeys. Some of the female experimental monkeys had offspring but were unable to care for them, neglected them and in some cases killed them.
• The lack of a real mother and normal attachment had made them totally dysfunctional.

Question 19

Evaluation of Harlow - theoretical value

Answer 19

• Had significantly changed our understanding of attachments and their value for later life.
• His studies showed the importance of contact comfort for normal emotional development and normal adult and parenting skills.
• Strength as it highlights what happens in early infancy can have far reaching effects into adult relationships and due to the strength of the theory we have a better understanding of human attachments.

Question 20

Evaluation of Harlow - practical value

Answer 20

• Harlow’s findings have been extended to a practical understanding of human infant and child neglect.
• In fields such as social work signs of neglect and abuse can be identified and strategies can be put in place to help.
• Strength - allows for more preventative action to take place and has had real life application.

Question 21

Evaluation of Harlow - ethical issues

Answer 21

• Critics have attacked Harlow for the unethical treatment of hundreds of baby rhesus monkeys.
• Conducted his research over a number of years and was creative in the ways he found to test the attachments between cloth mothers and the infants, often deliberately terrifying the infants to see their reaction. The rhesus monkeys were used because they were more human than Lorenz’s geese as an example so we might conclude that the monkeys suffering was also greater.
• Weakness - can have a negative impact on the reputation of psychology as a scientific discipline.

Question 22

Evaluation of Harlow - confounding variable

Answer 22

• The two stimulus objects varied more than just what cloth they were covered with.
• The two heads were very different which could have acted as a confounding variable.
• Weakness - may be that the monkey preferred one of the heads as opposed to the comfort element. Lack validity.