lorenz

Question 1

what is imprinting?

Answer 1

when an animal will strongly attach to the first object (usually the mother) they encounter
- infant animal will then follow this object

Question 2

procedure of Lorenz

Answer 2

• separating greylag goose eggs into 2 batches
• 1 batch = control group, hatched next to the goose in a natural environment
• 2nd batch= experimental group, incubator, first moving object was Lorenz
• marked the goslings and then put them together to see who imprinted on the goose
• behavior was recorded to indicate the attachment

Question 3

findings of Lorenz

Answer 3

• goslings hatched by Lorenz followed him
• goslings hatched naturally imprinted on the mother and followed her
• when the goslings were placed together, the 1/2 that had imprinted on Lorenz continued to follow him
• critical period = 32 hours
• if a gosling didn’t see a large moving object to imprint on it will not imprint at all

Question 4

conclusion

Answer 4

imprinting is a strong evolutionary/ biological feature

• imprinting only works with the first large object seen
• not other potential cues e.g smell, sound

Question 5

limitation

Answer 5

1. cannot generalize findings from birds to humans
   - mammalian attachment system is more complex for humans
   - humans = two-process model mother can also form an attachment with child
   - cant generalize Lorenz’s idea to humans
2. genes are evolutionarily/ genetically/ socially very different to humans
   - behaviour is different
   - Harlow model use of monkey may be closer to human psychology