Animal Studies Of Attachment Flashcards
Which two researchers researched attachment through animal studies?
Lorenz
Harlow
What was Lorenz’s research?
He split a clutch of goose eggs so that half were hatched with the mother and the other half kept with Lorenz
When they hatched Lorenz imitated the noise made by a mother goose and observed goslings
To test that imprinting had occurred, Lorenz put both groups of goslings together under a cardboard box, lifted the lid to see which ‘mother’ they would go to
What were Lorenz’s results?
When mixed under a cardboard box and then released, the goslings split into two groups and returned to either Lorenz or their mother
Lorenz concluded that geese imprint on the first moving object that they see during a 12-17 hour critical period after births. This suggests that attachment is innate and imprinting takes place without any feeding taking place
What was Harlow’s study?
Harlow raised infant monkeys in isolation with two surrogate mothers. One surrogate was made of wire which would provide food and the other one was covered in cloth
The infant monkeys were observed to see which of the two surrogates they spent the most time with and which they used as a safe base when deliberately frightened
What were Harlows results?
All eight monkeys spent most of the time attached to the cloth covered monkey regardless whether they provided food or not. When feeding from the wired surrogate the monkeys spent a short amount of time with it and returned to the cloth covered monkey
When frightened the infants would cling to the cloth covered mother
What does Harlow’s research suggest?
Attachment is not based on food as predicted by the learning approach /’d is instead because of a sense of comfort and security provided by the caregiver. Furthermore social contact is crucial for normal development
What study supports Lorenz’s claims about imprinting?
Guiton - chicks exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding during their first few weeks of life became imprinted to the gloves. This supports the view that young animals are not born with a certain predisposition to imprint on a specific type of object but probably any moving thing that is present during the critical window of development. This therefore suggests that Lorenz’s research is reliable as similar studies have subsequently been carried out and confirmed the conclusions that were made
What research doesn’t support the impact of imprinting and its permanency?
Guiton- found that chickens who had initially tried to mate with the rubber gloves that they had imprinted on from a young age, later spent time with their own species and were able to engage in normal sexual behaviour with other chickens. This suggests that imprinting may be a process that can be reversible if the animal is exposed to other members of their own species
How do confounding variables affect Harlow’s study?
The main criticism if the study is that the two stimulus objects varied in more ways than being cloth covered or not. The two heads were also different, which acted as a confounding variable because it varied systematically with the independent variable (mother being cloth covered or not). It is possible that the reason the infant monkeys preferred one mother to the other was because the cloth covered mother had a more attractive head. Therefore the conclusions of this study lack internal validity and possibly there is another factor that influences the development of attachment.
Why are animal studies bad?
The animal studies are not generalisable to human infants because humans develop differently from monkeys. Therefore the studies cannot be applied to humans
