animal studies on attachment Flashcards
animal studies of attachment: lorenz’s research- procedure
imprinting- procedure: set up a classic experiment in which he randomly 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.
lorenz’s research- findings
findings: the incubator group followed lorenz when they ifrst hatched whereas the control group followed the mother goose, even when they were mixed. this is called imprinting- where bird species that are mobile from birth immediately form attachments to the forst moving object they see. lorenz identified this as the crtical preiod. if imprinting did not occur during the critical preiod then chicks would not attach themselves to a mother figure
sexual imprinting
also investigated imprinting and adult male preferences. he observed that birds that had imprinted on humans also showed courting behaviour towards humans. in a case study, lorenz described a peacock who had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo whre the first moving object was the giant tortoises. as an adult the peacock would only show courting behaviour toards other tortoises. peacock had undergone sexual imprinting
harlows research: the importance of contact comfort- procedure
tested the idea that soft object served 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 wire mother whereas in the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother
importance of contact comfort- findings
the baby monkeys cuddles the cloth covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which mother dispensed milk. this showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour
maternally deprived monkeys as adults
the researcher found severe consequences to the maternally deprived monkeys as they grew into adulthood. the monkeys reared with the plain-wired monkeys only were the most dysfunctional. however even those reared with a cloth covered mother did not delvelop normal social behaviour. these depreived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and bred less often, being unskilled in mating. when they became mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked tehir children, even killing them in some cases
the critical period for normal development
harlow concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation- a mother figure had to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. after this attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible
