Animal studies of attachment Flashcards
What is imprinting?
Imprinting is when an animal ‘attaches’ to a moving thing, usually immediately after they hatch. The first ‘moving thing’ is supposed to be their mother (filial imprinting), but Lorenz was imprinted on. Imprinting is a survival mechanism that occurs during a critical period in an animal’s development. It’s most common in birds that leave the nest shortly after hatching, like geese and chickens.
What was Lorenz’s imprinting research?
- Divided a large clutch of goose eggs
- half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment
- the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
What was Lorenz’s imprinting findings?
- The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere
- The control group hatched in the presence of their mother, therefore followed her
- When the groups were mixed, control group followed mother, experimental group followed Lorenz
- Lorenz identified a critical period for when imprinting needs to take place - as brief as a ‘few hours’ after hatching/birth
- if imprinting does not occur within the time Lorenz found that chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure
What is sexual imprinting?
- Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate.
- Birds that imprinted on a human, would often later display courtship/attraction towards humans.
What was Lorenz’s sexual imprinting research?
- described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo, where the first moving objects the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises. As an adult this bird would only direct attraction/attention towards giant tortoises. Lorenz concluded that this meant the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting.
What is contact comfort?
Contact comfort is the physical and emotional comfort that an infant receives from being in close contact with a parental figure, such as their mother. It’s considered a foundation for attachment and the development of trust in infants.
What was Harlow’s procedure for contact comfort research?
Tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother, whereas in the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother
What was Harlow’s findings for contact comfort research?
The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the wire mother and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened (by a noisy mechanical teddy bear) regardless of which mother dispensed milk. This shows that contact comfort was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
What happened to maternally deprived monkeys as adults?
The researchers found severe consequences, the ones that reared with the wire mother were the most dysfunctional. However, even those reared with a cloth mother did not develop normal social behaviour. These deprived monkeys showed aggressive behaviour and were less sociable than other monkeys - this led to them breeding less often than is typical (being unskilled at mating). When they became mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.
What did Harlow find that the critical period is for normal development?
A mother figure had to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.
Evaluation for Lorenz’s research
Generalisability to humans:
- cannot generalise findings and conclusions form birds to humans
- mammalian attachment system is quite different and more complex than that in birds
- Mammals attachment is two way - baby attached to mother but also mother attaches to baby
This means that it is probably not appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas to humans
Applications to understanding human behaviour:
- although human attachment is different from birds there has been attempts to use the idea that some kind of imprinting explains human behaviour
- Peter Seebach (2005) suggested that computer users exhibit ‘baby duck syndrome’ - which is the attachment formed t0 their first computer operating system, leading to them rejecting others.
Research Support:
- Regolin and Vallortigara (1995)
- chicks exposed to simple shape combinations that moved, such as a triangle with a rectangle infront
- a range of shape combinations were moved in front of them and they followed the original most closely
This supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development, as predicted by Lorenz
Evaluation for Harlow’s research
Real - world value:
- 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 (Howe 1998)
- we also now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and breeding programmes in the wild
This means that the value of Harlow’s research is not just theoretical but also practical
Generalisability to humans:
- Rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than Lorenz’s birds, and all mammals share some common attachment behaviours
However, the human brain and human behaviour is still more complex than that of monkeys
This means that it may not be appropriate to generalise Harlow’s findings to humans
Ethical issues:
- Harlow’s research caused severe and long-term distress to the monkeys.
- However, his findings and conclusions have important theoretical and practical applications
