Animal studies of attachment

Question 1

What was the procedure of Lorenz& Imprinting (1935)

Answer 1

Lorenz set up a clasical experiment in which he randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs. Half the eggs were hatched witht he mother goose in their natural environment. Other half hatched in an incubator where the first object they saw was Lorenz

Question 2

What were the findings of Lorenz&Imprinting (1935)

Answer 2

Incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere wheras the control group, hatched in presence of their mother, followes her. When two groups were mixed up, the control group continues to follow their mother and experimental group followed Lorenz. Lorenz identified a critical perios in which imprinting needs to take place.

Question 3

What was the procedure of Harlows monkeys ?

Answer 3

16 Baby monkeys put with two wire model mothers. In one condition milk was attached by the plain wire mother wheras in a second condition the milk was wiht the cloth covered mother.

Question 4

What were the findings of Harlows monkeys

Answer 4

Found that the baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in prefernce to the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which had milk. This showed that ‘contact comfor’ was more of an importance to the monkey than food when it came to attachment behaviour.

Question 5

What is a strenght of Harlows monkeys in relation to attchment?

Answer 5

Harlow showed that attachment does not develop as a result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort

Question 6

What is a weakness of Harlows monkeys ?

Answer 6

Harlow faced severe criticism for the ethics of his research. Monkey species is considered similar enough to humans to be ablle to generalise findings’ whihc also means their suffering was quite human like.