Animal Studies of Attachment Flashcards
What are certain animals, such as many species of bird known to do to their mothers
To attach to their mother strongly; the infant animal will then follow their mother
What did Lorenz term the process of some animals following their mothers
Imprinting
What was Lorenz’s procedure
Greylag Goose eggs were randomly divided; half were taken to be hatched by Lorenz using an incubator, and the other half were hatched naturally by the biological mother. In later studies, he varied the time between hatching and when the gosling first observed a moving object.
What were Lorenz’s findings
The goslings who Lorenz had hatchedimprintedon him, following him rather than the Mother Goose. The goslings hatched in a natural environment,imprintedon the Mother goose and followed her.Lorenz placed all of the goslings in a box. When the goslings were released from the box, the goslings who had imprinted on Lorenz found him and continued to follow him.
Lorenz found the goslings had a critical period of around 32 hours; if a gosling did not see a large moving object to imprint on in these first few hours, it lost the ability to imprint.
What does Lorenz’s research suggest
Imprinting is a strong evolutionary/ biological feature of attachment in certain birds, and imprinting is with the first large object visually seen, not other potential cues (i.e. smell/sound).
What is the critical period for birds imprinting
Imprinting must occur within a few hours after birth (or does not happen).
What is meant by sexual imprinting
Birds show courtship behaviour (mating behaviour) towards whatever species they imprint on.
Give an evaluation of Lorenz’s research based on research support (strength)
One strength of Lorenz’s research is support for the concept of imprinting.
Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved. When shown a range of moving shapes the chicks followed these in preference to other shapes.
Therefore, this suggests that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object.
Give an evaluation of Lorenz’s research based on generalisability (Weakness)
One limitation is generalising from birds to humans.
The mammalian attachment system is quite different from imprinting in birds. For example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young.
Therefore, this means that it may not be appropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas about imprinting to humans.
What was John Bowlby’s theory on the possible implications if imprinting doesn’t occur
His theory suggests that there is a critical period for developing an attachment (about 0 -5 years). If an attachment has not developed during this period, then the child will suffer from irreversible developmental consequences, such as reduced intelligence and increased aggression. (evolutionary theory)
How do we know comfort is important between caregivers and infants
Infant monkeys preferred a cloth-covered mother to a wire one regardless of which provided milk
What is meant by maternal deprivation in monkeys
Monkeys brought up without a mother were dysfunctional as adults.
What is the critical period for Rhesus Macaque Monkeys
Monkeys had around 90 days to attach to a mother figure or they could not form an attachment.
What was Harlows procedure
Infant Rhesus Macaque monkeys were removed from their biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers.
One surrogate mother provided milk but not comfort, as its body was constructed of exposed wire;
The other surrogate mother provided comfort as the wire was covered with a cloth; the cloth mother did not provide food.
Time spent with the mother was recorded, as well as which surrogate the infant ran to when frightened by a mechanical monkey.
What were Harlows findings
The infant monkeys spent most of their time with the comfort-providing “cloth mother”, only visiting the “food mother” when they needed to eat but quickly returning to the cloth mother for comfort.
The infant monkeys returned to the cloth mother when frightened.
And monkeys without access to a cloth mother showed signs of stress-related illness.
In follow-up studies, Harlow found that thematernal deprivationhis studies had caused resulted in permanent social disorders in the monkeys as adults, including difficulty in mating behaviour and raising their offspring.
