animal studies

Question 1

ethology

Answer 1

the study of non-human animals in order to learn more about humans

Question 2

benefits of ethology

Answer 2

bred faster, controlled, more ethically acceptable to manipulate animals > humans

Question 3

limitations of ethology

Answer 3

different to humans thoughts and conscious capacity
-> extrapolation

Question 4

Lorenz’s aim

Answer 4

to understand the relationship between newborn animals and their mothers, focusing on the power of imprinting

Question 5

imprinting

Answer 5

an innate readiness to acquire certain behaviours during a critical period of development

Question 6

Lorenz’s study

Answer 6

• randomly split a large clutch of greylag goose eggs into two batches
• one batch hatched naturally with the mother, the others hatched in an incubator with Lorenz being the first moving object the goslings encountered
• marked them so he knew which was which
• placed all the goslings under an upturned box and then removed them and the goslings behaviour was observed

Question 7

Lorenz’s findings

Answer 7

• the goslings divided themselves up, 1 followed their natural mother and the others followed Lorenz
• Lorenz’s goslings showed no recognition to their natural mother
• noted that imprinting is restricted to a very definite period of a young animals lie, the critical period and that imprinting is irreversible
• supports the view that having a biological basis for an attachment is adaptive as it promotes survival

Question 8

limitation of Lorenz

Answer 8

issues with extrapolation
- shouldn’t generalises these ideas to humans
-> only one breed of geese, can’t even generalise to all animals as a whole
- biological interuptionsh

Question 9

sexual imprinting

Answer 9

“the idea that imprinting can affect adult mate preferences, animals will choose to mate with the same kind of object upon which they imprinted”
imprinting is irreversible and leads to sexual imprinting

Question 10

strengths of Lorenz

Answer 10

field experiment

Question 11

research support for imprinting

Answer 11

regolin and vallortigara
- exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved, such as rectangles or triangles
- the chicks followed the original shape most closely

Question 12

Harlow’s aim

Answer 12

to investigate how infant rhesus monkeys attached to their mothers

Question 13

Harlow’s method

Answer 13

x2 surrogate monkeys -> one was cloth and wire
8 monkeys, 165 days
4 had milk with cloth, 4 had milk with wire (alternatively)

Question 14

Harlow’s findings

Answer 14

• the baby monkeys cuddled the cloth mother > wired one and sought comfort when frightened over the one with milk
• comfort > food

Question 15

strength of Harlow

Answer 15

• real world value
• can be seen through social workers and clinical psychologists that support children who’ve been through maternal deprivation

Question 16

limitation of Harlow

Answer 16

• cost benefit analysis
• monkeys experienced long term stress and lacked an ability to social and mate