Animal studies Flashcards
What was the procedure of Lorenz’s research?
He randomly divided up a clutch of goose eggs; 6 were hatched with their mother, 6 hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
What is imprinting?
Where bird species attach to and follow the first moving object that they see.
Lorenz identified a critical period for when imprinting needs to occur.
What were the findings of Lorenz’s research?
The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, whereas the control group followed their mother.
When the 2 groups were mixed up, the control group continued to follow the mother, and the incubator group followed Lorenz.
This is called imprinting.
What is the critical period for birds and what happens if they don’t imprint?
It depends on the birds but could be as short as a few hours. If it doesn’t occur, they will not attach to a mother figure.
What did Lorenz find about sexual imprinting regarding birds?
lorenz found that birds who imprinted on a human would later show courtship behaviour towards humans.
What was the case study for sexual imprinting that lorenz described?
Lorenz described a peacock that had been reared in a reptile house in the zoo where the first moving object that the reptile saw after hatching was a giant tortoise. The bird would only show courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises.
What was the procedure of Harlow’s research?
Harlow (1958) tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mom.
In 1 condition he reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’.
In one condition, milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a 2nd condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother.
What were the findings of Harlow’s research?
Harlow found that baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire 1 and sought comfort from the cloth 1 when frightened regardless of what dispensed milk.
This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance than food when it came to attachment behaviour - contradicts cupboard love theory.
What were the effects of maternal deprivation on the monkeys as adults?
Monkeys reared with only wire mothers were most dysfunctional.
Monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable.
They bred less than what is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating.
Some of the deprived mothers neglected their young and others attacked their children, some even killing them.
What was the critical period for monkeys according to Harlow?
What would happen if this attachment didn’t form?
90 days.
After this time, attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible.
