ATTACHMENT: animal studies

Question 1

Lorenz’s Geese

Answer 1

• 12 geese eggs were randomly divided
• half in their natural environment with their mother, the other half in an incubator with Lorenz as protector
• He found that the incubator group followed Lorenz and the control group followed the mother due to IMPRINTING = birds attach to the first thing they see.
• Lorenz identified a critical period (the few hours of life) where if this imprinting didn’t happen – chicks wouldn’t attach to anything
• Lorenz also investigated the relationships between imprinting and adult mate preferences. He observed that birds that imprinted on humans would later display courtship behaviour towards humans

Question 2

Harlow’s monkeys

Answer 2

• Involved monkeys being raised in isolation cages – a controlled environment . (16 monkeys)
• critical period to be 90 days)-
• The infant monkeys were raised with two surrogate mothers made out of either wire (with a bottle of milk attached to dispense food) or cloth-covered mother with no food, were created and put in each cage.
• The amount of time each monkey spent with each mother was recorded.
• It was found that the monkeys preferred the cloth mother regardless of whether she produced milk or not.
• Monkeys with only a wire mother had diarrhoea = sign of stress. There was even one fear condition where the monkeys were scared with a scary monster to see which mother they would run too. All ran to the cloth mother.
• Conclusion = monkeys have an innate need for contact comfort, more so than food, suggesting their attachments are based more on emotional security than food.

Question 3

long term effect on Harlow’s monkeys

Answer 3

• The long term effects were recorded.
• The researchers found severe consequences of maternal deprivation
• The monkeys reared with wire mothers only were the most dysfunction - however, even those reared with a soft toy as a substitute developed atypical social behaviour
  They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and they bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at maturing. As mothers, some of them neglected their young and other attacked their children, even killing them in some cases

Question 4

Lorenz specific evaluations

Answer 4

• Generalisability to humans
  = Although some of his findings have influenced our understanding of human development, there is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans full stops it seems that the mammalian attachment system is quite different from that in birds. For example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young then do birds, and mammals may be able to form attachments at anytime.
• This means that it is not appropriate to try to generalise any of Lorenz’s ideas to humans.
• There is an argument that, of the two, Harlow’s study (which used a mammalian species) may be more relevant to human experience and therefore slightly more generalisable.
• Some of Lorenz’s observations have been questioned
  – later researchers have questioned weather imprinting has a permanent effect on mating behaviour. Guiton et al (1966) found chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves. The chickens tried to mate with them as adults (as Lorenz predicted) but t with experience they eventually leant to prefer mating with other chickens. This suggests that the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.
• There is an argument that the critical period may be more of a ‘sensitive period’ in humans as studies have demonstrated how children have been able to recover from early deprivation, eg Romanian orphan studies. This suggests that the negative effects of neglect, or not seeing a parent very often, may not be as detrimental in the long term as Lorenz makes out.

Question 5

harlow specific evaluations

Answer 5

• Harlow faced severe criticism for the ethics of his research. The monkeys suffered greatly as a result of Harlow’s procedures. This species is considered similar enough to humans to be able to generalise the findings, which also means that their suffering was presumably quite human like. Harlow himself was well aware of the suffering he caused .

(+) The counter argument is that Harlow’s research was sufficiently important enough to justify the effects.

(+)practical value - the insight into attachment from Harlow’s research has had important applications in a range of practical context. For example, it has helped social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and so intervene to prevent it. Of course these findings are also important in the care of captive monkeys , we now understand the importance of proper attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos.

• Lack of consistency in research and theories
  Harlow’s suggestion that contact comfort/sensitive responsiveness is more important than food contradicts learning theory. Which one is correct?
• There is support from human studies, eg Schaffer and Emerson Glasgow study supports the idea that responsiveness may be more important than food which supports Harlow’s final conclusions - this increases psychologists confidence in his conclusions.