Imprinting Flashcards
What is imprinting?
Where an offspring will follow the first moving object they see once born.
What did Lorenz hypothesise about imprinting?
That is baby animals can imprint after such a short space of time, then attachment must be innate, meaning it is a natural, biological instinct, rather than something learned through experience.
What were the groups/conditions in Lorenz’s 1952 research?
1.) One group of goslings stayed with their mother in their natural environment - control group. Their mother was the first living, moving thing they saw.
2.) The other group was placed in an incubator - experimental group. Lorenz was the first living, moving thing they saw.
What happened after the eggs hatched in Lorenz’s research?
Lorenz marked the goslings so he knew which group they were in. He placed them all under an upturned box. The box was then removed and the goslings behaviour was recorded.
What were the results of Lorenz’s research?
- the goslings in the control group followed their natural mother.
- the goslings in the experimental group followed Lorenz, as they had imprinted on him.
What did Lorenz conclude as a result of his research?
- there is a critical period when imprinting happens (13-16 hours after hatching for goslings.
- if the goslings don’t see a moving object during this time, they can’t imprint.
What is sexual imprinting?
Lorenz noticed that birds that imprinted on humans would often try to court humans later on.
What was Lorenz’s study surrounding sexual imprinting?
A peacock had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo. The first moving things the peacock saw were giant tortoises. As an adult, the peacock only tried to court giant tortoises.
Lorenz concluded that the peacock has gone through sexual imprinting, meaning it has learned to focus on tortoises as potential mates.
What did Harlow research?
He tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In one experiment, he reared 16 baby rhesus monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’.
What were the conditions in Harlow’s research?
In one condition, milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother, whereas in the second condition, milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother.
What were the results of Harlow’s research?
The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the plain wire mother, and taught comfort from the cloth one when frightened, regardless of which mother dispensed milk.
What did the results from Harlow’s research suggest?
That ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
How did Harlow suggest that being maternally deprived would affect the monkeys as adults?
They were more aggressive, less social, and less successful at mating. When these monkeys became mothers, some neglected their babies, while other mothers attacked and even killed their children.
What did Harlow suggest was the critical period for attachment formation for monkeys?
90 days. After this time, attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.
What other research supports Lorenz’s findings?
- Lucia Regolin and Giorgio Vallortigara 1995.
- Chicks are shown moving shapes. When different shapes were moved in front of them, they followed the original shape most closely.
- This supports Lorenz’s idea that young animals have an innate ability to imprint on a moving object during the critical period of attachment.
