animal studies of attachment

Question 1

what do animal studies look at?

Answer 1

at the formation of early bonds between non-human parents and their offspring

Question 2

why are psychologists interested in animal studies?

Answer 2

attachment-like behaviour is common to a range of species and can help us understand attachment in humans

Question 3

what animals did Lorenz study?

Answer 3

geese

Question 4

what did Lorenz study in geese?

Answer 4

imprinting

Question 5

what is imprinting?

Answer 5

whereby bird species that are mobile from birth attach to and follow the first moving object they see

Question 6

what was Lorenz procedure?

Answer 6

he randomly
divided a clutch of goose eggs. half the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their
natural environment. the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object
they saw was Lorenz

Question 7

what was Lorenz findings?

Answer 7

the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group, followed their mother. when the two groups were mixed up, the control group continued to follow the mother and the experimental group followed Lorenz.

Question 8

what did Loren identify that needs to happen for birds to imprint?

Answer 8

a critical period

Question 9

what did Lorenz find about sexual imprinting?

Answer 9

birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans

Question 10

one strength of Lorenz’ geese

Answer 10

these results of imprinting suggest that the cause of attachment is due to nature as opposed to nurture.

Question 11

one weakness of Lorenz’ geese

Answer 11

Lorenz was interested in imprinting in birds. although some of his findings have influenced
our understanding of human development, there is a problem in generalising from findings on birds to humans.

Question 12

what animals did Harlow study?

Answer 12

rhesus monkeys

Question 13

what was Harlow’s procedure?

Answer 13

8 monkeys which were caged from infancy with wire mesh food dispensing surrogate mothers and cloth-covered surrogate mothers, to investigate which of the two would have more attachment behaviours directed towards it. Harlow measured the amount time that monkeys spent with each surrogate mother.

Question 14

what was Harlow’s findings?

Answer 14

separated infant rhesus monkeys showed attachment behaviours towards a cloth-covered surrogate mother when frightened, rather than a food-dispensing surrogate mother. monkeys were willing to explore a room full of novel toys when the cloth-covered monkey was present but displayed phobic responses when only the food-dispensing surrogate was present. this showed that ’contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

Question 15

what consequences did maternally deprived mothers have as adults?

Answer 15

more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys, unskilled at mating. as mothers, some neglected their young and others attacked them, killing them in some cases.

Question 16

when is the critical period for monkeys identified by Harlow?

Answer 16

a mother
figure had to be introduced to an infant monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form

Question 17

one strength of Harlow’s monkeys

Answer 17

Harlow’s findings showed that attachment doesn’t develop as the result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort. also showed us the importance of the quality of early relationships for later social development including the ability to hold down adult relationships and successfully rear children

Question 18

one limitation of Harlow’s monkeys

Answer 18

these studies are unethical as the monkeys grew up to be very disturbed adults. they didn’t know how to mix with other monkeys and showed signs of what we would recognise as depression in humans.