Animals (H+L) Flashcards
What was Lorenz’s aim
To investigate the effect of imprinting on greyleg goslings
What is Lorenz’s procedure
Randomly divided a clutch of greyleg goose eggs (1/2 with mother goose and half with him in incubator) and then waited for them to hatch
What did Lorenz find
Lorenz found that the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, but the control group followed their mother goose. When the two groups were mixed this stayed the same. Therefore they showed imprinting.
Define imprinting
imprinting is where a mobile animal attach and follow the first moving object they see.
Lorenz found that if imprinting for the goslings didn’t happen within a few hours of hatching, then they did not attach to a mother figure.
What did Lorenz find about sexual imprinting
Lorenz found that birds who imprinted on a human, would later show courtship behaviour towards humans.
He used a case study where a peacock had imprinted on giant turtles in a zoo reptile house. The peacock later showed courtship behaviour towards the turtles, (sexual imprinting)
A03 Limit Lorenz
Lack of generalisability:
Mammals such as humans attach differently to birds and other species. Mammals attach in a two way process; where babies show attachment to a mother, but mothers also attach to the babies. This did not happen in Lorenz’s study.
A03 strength Lorenz
Regolin et al:
showed hatching chicks a simple shape combination that moved, a range of shape combinations then moved infront of them, but the chicks followed the original most closely. Suggests that animals are born with innate drives to imprint and attach to a moving object in the critical window.
What was Harlow’s aim
To assess the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother for animals.
What was Harlows procedure
*16 Rhesus monkies
*two wire model mothers. In one condition, milk was dispensed by the plan wired mother, in a second condition the cloth mother dispensed the milk.
What did Harlow find?
The monkies cuddled the cloth mother rather than the wired mother, and sought comfort from the cloth mother when frightened by noises, this was the case regardless of whether the cloth mother dispensed milk or not.
CONTACT COMFORT WAS MORW IMPORTANT THAN FOOD IN ATTACHMENT
How did Harlow find maternal deprivation impacted the monkies as adults?
The effect of maternal deprivation was permanent.
They found severe consequences for monkies reared by the wire mother only, but even those with the cloth mother didn’t develop normally.
They were:
-aggressive and less sociable
-bred less
-those who did breed often neglected, attacked and killed their young
What did Harlow find the critical period as for monkies
90 days
after this damage became irreversible
A03 Strength Harlow
Real world application:
-helped social workers understand how lack of bonding may be a risk factor in child development. Therefore they are able to intervene and prevent bad outcomes.
-We now understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkies in zoo’s or breeding programmes.
A03 Limit Harlow
Generalisability:
-More similar to humans than Lorenz’s birds, but human brain and behaviour is still more complex than monkies, so generalisability may still not be accurate.
Ethical issues:
-Resaearch caused long term damage to the monkies involved therefore is unethical (PFH)
BUT cost benefit of research usage may suggest this damage was worthwhile for greater understanding
