animal studies of attachment Flashcards
lorenz’s research on imprinting
basis - first observed when he was a child, neighbour gave him a newly hatched duckling that followed him around
procedure - as an adult, set up classic experiment in which he randomly divided large clutch of goose eggs. half of the eggs were hatched with mother in natural environment, half hatched in an incubator, first thing they saw was lorenz
findings - incubator group followed lorenz everywhere, whereas control group (natural environment) followed their mother. when mixed up, this was still the same. called imprinting, where bird species attach to and follow first moving thing seen. lorenz identified crucial period where this takes place - depending on species, can be as brief as a few hours after birth. if imprinting doesn’t occur within this time, lorenz found that chicks didn’t attach themselves to a mother figure.
lorenz’s research on sexual imprinting
- also investigated relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences
- observed that birds that imprinted on a human would later display courtship behaviour toward humans
- lorenz described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where it first saw giant tortoises after hatching
- as an adult, this bird only directed courtship towards giant tortoises
- lorenz concluded that the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting
harlow’s research on importance of contact comfort
basis - observed that newborns kept alone in a bare cage often died, but usually survived if given something soft like a cloth to cuddle
procedure - tested idea that soft objects serve function of a mother. in one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’ who dispensed milk, in comparison to a cloth covered model who also dispensed milk.
findings - monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother in preference to the wire mother, and sought comfort from the cloth covered one when frightened, regardless of which mother dispensed milk
conclusion - shows that contact comfort is of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour, supports importance of physical bonding between mother and baby and that comfort contact helps establish an emotional bond
harlow’s research on maternally deprived monkeys as adults
- also followed monkeys who had been deprived of a real mother into adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect
- monkeys reared with plain wire mothers only were most dysfunctional
- even those reared with cloth covered mother did not develop normal social behaviour
- monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable with others, bred less often and when becoming mothers, often neglected their young, some even attacked and killed their children
harlow’s research on the critical period for normal development
- harlow also concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation
- a mother figure has to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form
- after this time, attachment is impossible and damage done by deprivation is irreversible
strength of lorenz - research support from regolin and vallortigara
- support for imprinting
- chicks exposed to simple shape combinations that moved
- then exposed to other shape combinations, but they would only follow the first combination
- supports view that animals born with innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development
limitation of lorenz - generalisability to humans
- cannot generalise findings and conclusions from birds to humans
- mammalian attachemnt is different and more complex than for birds, for example mammalian mothers also show attachment
- probably not appropriate to generalise ideas to humans
strength of harlow - real-world value
- has helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that lack of bonding may be risk factor in child development, allows them to prevent poor outcomes
- practical value of research
limitation of harlow - generalisability to humans
- cannot generalise from monkeys to humans
- rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than birds, as they share the same attachment behaviours
- however, human brain and behaviour is still more complex than that of monkeys
- may not be appropriate to generalise findings to humans
lorenz and harlow linked to nature / nurture debate
nature - biologically driven, critical periods seen in multiple species, production of oxytocin with comfort contact, attachment for survival
nurture - imprint on first moving object, maternal deprivation of primary caregiver leads to atypical behaviours
- harlow’s is more useful as we are biologically and socially closer to primates than birds, humans do not imprint in the same way as birds so this tells us little about human imprinting
ethical considerations of animal research - positives
- veiwed to be more ethical to isolate or deprive baby animals from attachments, we can therefore find out about negative implications on attachments in a controlled way
- scientific value outweighs negative impact on non-human species
ethical considerations of animal research - negatives
- suffering of animals when separated / born into captivity, potential implications during and after study
