Animal Studies Of Attachment Content

Question 1

Why do psychologists look at animal studies?

Answer 1

. Slightly more ethical than human studies
. Their behaviour can be similar to humans

Question 2

Who came up with imprinting theory?

Answer 2

Konrad Lorenz

Question 3

Give a short summary about Konrad Lorenz

Answer 3

. Old white male from 1960s
. Spent a lot of his life with geese
. Influential ethologist
. Looked at animal behaviour, specially imprinting, when he was a child
. Neighbour gave him a duckling who followed him around

Question 4

What is imprinting?

Answer 4

An innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the first moving object which takes place during a specific time in development, probably the first few hours after birth/hatching (critical period)

Question 5

How was imprinting seen in Lorenz’s study?

Answer 5

When young goslings are born, they follow the first large, moving object they see innately and attach to them

Question 6

What was the procedure of Lorenz (1935)?

Answer 6

Took a clutch of gosling eggs and divided them into two groups

Group 1: left with natural mother (control group)
Group 2: left in incubator (experimental group)

When the incubator eggs hatched, the first thing the Gosling’s saw was Lorenz
When the natural eggs hatched, the first thing they saw was their natural mother

Question 7

What are the findings of Lorenz (1935)?

Answer 7

. Once the goslings hatched, they followed the first moving object they saw during the critical period (12-17 hours)
. Lorenz’s geese (incubated ones) showed no recognition of their natural mother
. Lorenz found that imprinting to humans doesn’t work for some animals e.g curlews won’t imprint on a human

Question 8

What is the critical period in Lorenz’s study and what is significant about it?

Answer 8

12-17 hours: imprinting will not occur if the animal isn’t exposed to a moving object in this critical period

Question 9

What conclusions can be drawn from Lorenz’s study?

Answer 9

. Attachment is innate and genetic: supports view that having a biological basis for attachment is adaptive
. Highlighted the idea of a critical period
. Imprinting is an innate process

Question 10

How did Lorenz test the effects of imprinting immediately after his study?

Answer 10

Marked the two different groups and put them together, with both Lorenz and the natural mother present. The incubator group continued to imprint on Lorenz only

Question 11

What were the long-lasting effects of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 11

. Early imprinting had an effect later on for mate preferences = sexual imprinting
. Several features of imprinting were noted by Lorenz in 1952

Question 12

What are the features of imprinting (Lorenz 1952)?

Answer 12

. Occurs without any feeding taking place
. Irreversible
. If no attachment has developed within 32 hours, it’s unlikely any attachment will develop
. Imprinting has consequences for methods of short-term survival
. Imprinting helps to develop internal templates for later relationships

Question 13

What is sexual imprinting?

Answer 13

When a young animal learns and bases the characteristics of a mate off of observations from an early age. Animal will choose to mate with the same kind of object they were imprinted on.

Question 14

What did Harlow call his research report?

Answer 14

‘The origins of love’

Question 15

What is the theory of cupboard love?

Answer 15

When the infant attaches to the caregiver who provides the food

Question 16

What was the aim of Harlow’s monkeys (1959)?

Answer 16

To show that attachment isn’t based on the feeding bond between mother and infant as suggested by learning theories of attachment

Question 17

What was the procedure of Harlow’s monkeys?

Answer 17

8 rhesus monkeys studied for 165 days

There were two surrogate (fake) wire mothers:
1. Cloth mother
2. Wire mother

4 monkeys had a feeding tube on the ‘cloth mother’
4 monkeys had a feeding tube on the ‘wire mother’

Question 18

What was measured in Harlow’s monkeys?

Answer 18

. Time monkey spent with each ‘mother’
. Observations of responses when frightened by a mechanical teddy bear

Question 19

What were the findings of Harlow’s monkeys experiment?

Answer 19

. All monkeys spent most time with the cloth mother, no matter who had the feeding tube
. Those feeding on the wire mother only went to it in desperate need for food before jumping back to the cloth mother
. When frightened, all monkeys clung to the cloth mother
. When playing with new objects, kept a foot on the cloth mother for safety (proximity for secure base)

Question 20

What main conclusion can be drawn from Harlow’s monkeys experiment?

Answer 20

Attachment isn’t based on the feeding bond but best contact comfort

Question 21

How did Harlow investigate the long-lasting effects of his experiment?

Answer 21

Continued to study the monkeys as they grew up

Question 22

What were the long-lasting effects on the rhesus monkeys?

Answer 22

. Motherless monkeys, even with contact comforts developed abnormally:
- socially abnormal: froze/fled around other monkeys
- sexually abnormal: no normal mating behaviour and didn’t cradle own babies

. Harlow found a critical period for these effects:
. If motherless monkeys spent time with monkey ‘peers’ before 3 months, they could recover and develop normal attachments
- after 6 months with the wire mother, monkeys couldn’t recover

Question 23

What did a Lorenz case study in 1952 to support sexual imprinting say?

Answer 23

A peacock was brought up in a reptile house of a zoo, the first moving thing it saw after hatching was a giant tortoise
- as an adult, the peacock would only display courtship behaviour (mating behaviour) towards giant tortoises