Animal Studies of Attachment Flashcards
Define imprinting
Imprinting is where bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object see.
Describe the Lorenz’s research
Lorenz divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half of the eggs 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. Lorenz found that the incubator group followed him around everywhere. The control group followed their mother everywhere. When the two groups mixed up the control group still followed the mother goose and the experimental group still followed Lorenz.
From this research, Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. Depending on the species this can be as brief as a few hours after hatching. If imprinting doesn’t occur in that time, chicks didn’t attach themselves to a mother figure.
What are long lasting effects of imprinting?
Lorenz noted that imprinting was irreversible and long lasting as he observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans. In a case study Lorenz found that a peacock that saw giant tortoises as it’s first moving object only directed courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises when it was an adult - this is sexual imprinting.
Describe Harlow’s research
Harlow’s aim was to test if soft objects serve some of the functions of a mother. Harlow reared 16 baby monkeys with two-wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother. In the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother. Harlow found that the baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This shows that contact comfort was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
What are the long-lasting effects of maternal deprivation found in the rhesus monkeys by Harlow?
The monkeys reared with wire mother’s were the most dysfunctional; however even those reared with a soft toy as a substitute did not develop normal social behaviour. They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and bred less often than is typical for monkeys, due to being unskilled at mating. As mothers some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases.
What is a critical period that Harlow discovered for normal development in monkeys?
A mother figure has to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time attachment is impossible and the damage done by early deprivation becomes irreversible.
Evaluate evaluate research into animal studies of attachment
Lorenz:
Mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their children than birds do, and can form attachments at any time, albeit less easily than in infancy. It seems that the mammalian attachment system is quite different from that in bird’s. So, it is difficult and inappropriate to generalise any of Lorenz’s ideas to explain human attachment as humans attach differently.
Guiton et al found that chickens who imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try and mate with them as adults (as Lorenz predicted), but after spending more time with their own species, they were able to engage in normal sexual behaviour with other chickens. Therefore, there is not a permanent effect of imprinting as Lorenz suggested as it has been found that the effects can be reversed by socialising more with their own species.
Harlow:
The stimulus objects (the two mothers) varied by being cloth covered or not, but also the two heads were very different. This is a limitation because it means the research may lack internal validity as perhaps the monkeys were drawn to the clothed monkey because it looked more realistic which attracted them. Therefore, this is an extraneous variable which could be a confounding variable.
Benefits:
Harlow’s research shows that attachment does not develop as a result of being fed by a mother figure but rather as a result of contact comfort. He also highlighted the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children. Harlow’s research has real life applications as it has helped social workers understand the risk factor in child neglect and abuse which has encouraged them to intervene early on to prevent it. Taught zookeepers the proper care of captive monkeys and the importance of baby monkeys having a proper attachment figure. Some ethical laws were formed as a result of Harlow’s experiment.
Costs:
Harlow abused the monkeys in his experiment by forcing them into conditions such as the rape rack and the pit of despair, even the act of separating the baby monkeys from their mother could be viewed as unethical. This is supported by the fact that many of the monkeys showed sign os psychological and physical trauma, as a result of the experiments. For example, some monkeys were suicidal and some abused their own children in later life.
