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Animal Studies of Attachment - Coggle Diagram
Animal Studies of Attachment
Lorenz (1952)
CONCLUSIONS: identified a critical period when imprinting needs to take place. If imprinting did not occur, the chicks didn't attach themselves to a mother figure.
PROCEDURE: randomly divided 12 goose eggs. Half were hatch in the presence of the mother goose and the others were hatched in an incubator where Lorenz was the 1st moving object they saw.
FINDINGS: The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere, the control group followed the mother goose. This still happened when the groups were mixed.
Harlow (1958)
CONCLUSION: suggests that comfort contact is more important than food when it comes to attachment behaviour.
PROCEDURE: tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother. In 1 experiment the reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model 'model'. In 1 condition, milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother and in the other conditions, it was dispensed by cloth covered monkeys.
FINDINGS: the baby monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother over the plain wire one (sought comfort in the cloth one when frightened even if it didn't dispense milk.
Lorenz Evaluation
The mammalian attachment system is very different to other species so findings cannot be generalised across species.
Guiton (1966) found that chicks which imprinted on yellow washing gloves, tried to mate with them as adults. Suggests the young are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on any moving object present during the critical period.
Guiton also found that with experience, they learned to mate with their own species therefore suggesting the effects of imprinting are not as long lasting as Lorenz originally believed.
Harlow Evaluation
Difficult to generalise as monkeys and humans may act differently.
Helped social workers risk factors in child abuse and the importance of attachment figures for animals in the wild and captivity.
Harlow caused suffering to the monkeys and can therefore be considered unethical.
Maternal Deprivation in Monkeys
They were more aggressive, less sociable and bred less than normal. When they became mothers, some neglected and attacked their children.
He also followed the monkeys that had been maternally deprived into adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect.
They found that the monkeys reared with plain wire mothers only were the most dysfunctional however even the 'cloth covered group' didn't develop normal social behaviour.