Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Animal Studies of Attachment - Coggle Diagram
Animal Studies of Attachment
Lorenz Geese
In the early 20th century, a number of ethologists conducted animal studies of the relationships between new-born animals and their mothers. One of the most prominent ethologists was Konrad Lorenz
Sexual Imprinting: Lorenz also investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences. He observed that birds that imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans. In a case study Lorenz (1952) described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving objects the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises. As an adult this bird would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises, Lorenz concluded that this meant the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting
Imprinting: Lorenz (1952) first observed the phenomenon of imprinting when he was a child and a neighbour gave him a newly hatched duckling that followed him around
Procedure: He set up a classic experiment in which he randomly divided a large clutch of goose eggs. Half of the eggs were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment. The other half in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
Findings: The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group, hatched in the presence of their mother, followed her. When the two groups were mixed up, the control group continued to follow the mother and the experiment group followed Lorenz - This is called imprinting
Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place. Depending on the species this can be as brief as a few hours after hatching. If imprinting does not occur within that time Lorenz found that chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure
Harlow's Monkeys
Harlow worked with rhesus monkeys, which are much more similar to humans than Lorenz's geese
Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for attachment formation - a mother figure had to be introduced to a young monkey within 90 days for an attachment to form. After this time, attachment was impossible and the damage done by early deprivation became irreversible
The importance of contact comfort: Harlow observed that new-borns kept alone in a bare cage often died but that they usually survived if given something soft like a cloth to cuddle
Maternally deprived monkeys as adults: Harlow also followed a monkey who had been deprived of a 'real' mother in adulthood to see if this early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect. These deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys and bred less often than is typical for monkeys, being unskilled at mating. When they become mothers, some of the deprived monkeys neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases
Procedure: Harlow (1958) tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire mode 'mothers'. In one condition milk was dispersed by the plain-wire mother whereas the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered mother
Findings: The baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the plain-wire mother and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which mother dispensed milk. This showed that 'contact comfort' was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour
A03 - Evaluation - Lorenz
Research Support: One strength of Lorenz's research is the existence of support for the concept of imprinting. Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) supports Lorenz's idea of imprinting. Chicks were exposed to simple shape combinations that moved, such as a triangle with a rectangle in front. A range of shape combinations were then moved in front of them and they followed the original most closely. This supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development, as predicted by Lorenz
Generalisability to humans: One limitation of Lorenz's studies is the ability to generalise findings and conclusions from birds to humans. Mammals attach differently to humans, through a two way system unlike humans, meaning its not as valid compared to Harlow's study to humans
AO3 - Evaluation - Harlow
Real-world Value: One strength of Harlow's research is its important real-world application. For example, it has helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development allowing them to intervene to prevent poor outcomes (Howe 1998)
Generalisability to humans: One limitation of Harlow's research is the ability to generalise findings and conclusions from monkeys to humans. Rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than Lorenz's geese, and all mammals share some common attachment behaviours. However, the human brain and human behaviour is still more complex than that of monkeys. This means it may not be appropriate to generalise Harlow's findings to humans