Lorenz: Animal Studies

Question 1

In what year did Lorenz’s study take place?

Answer 1

1935

Question 2

What was the aim of Lorenz’s experiment?

Answer 2

To examine the phenomenon of imprinting in non-human animals

Question 3

What is imprinting?

Answer 3

Where the offspring follows and forms an attachment bond to the first large moving object they see after birth

Question 4

What was the method of Lorenz’s experiment?

Answer 4

• Lorenz randomly divided greylag goose eggs into 2 batches
• The control group was hatched naturally by the mother, but the experimental group were placed in an incubator, where Lorenz was the first large moving object they saw
• He marked the goslings so he knew what condition they were in and then the box they were in was taken away
• Their behaviours were then recorded

Question 5

What were the results of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 5

• He found that naturally hatched goslings followed their mother and the incubator hatched goslings followed Lorenz (straight after birth)
• Imprinting only occurred within a critical time period of 4-25 hours
• This relationship proved to be irreversible

Question 6

What was the conclusions of Lorenz’s study?

Answer 6

• The results suggest that imprinting is a form of attachment that’s exhibited by birds that typically leave the nest early
• They imprint on to the first large moving object they see after birth

Question 7

Lorenz: Research support (AO3)

Answer 7

P: One strength of Lorenz’s research comes from later research support.
E: Guiton (1966) replicated the findings of Lorenz with leghorn chickens. He found that these chickens, exposed to yellow rubber gloves for feeding, became imprinted on the gloves.
E: This shows that young animals are not born with a predisposition to imprint to a specific type of object, but develop their imprinting with any moving object within a critical window of development.
L: This supports the findings of Lorenz within a different species and suggests that behaviours aren’t innate, but learnt.

Question 8

Lorenz: Criticism of imprinting (AO3)

Answer 8

P: One criticism of Lorenz’s research is his concept of ‘imprinting’.
E: The original concept of imprinting is that an image is stamped irreversibly on the nervous system. However, it is now believed that imprinting is more flexible.
E: Guiton (1966) found also that he could reverse the imprinting of rubber gloves on chickens. They had originally tried to mate with a rubber glove, but when placed back with their own specie that engaged in normal sexual activity.
L: This shows that imprinting is no different from other types of learning and the effects are irreversible, unlike Lorenz’s original proposal.