lorenz & harlow

• in the early 20th century, ethiologists did research into attatchment between a new born animals and their mothers, observations gave information about infant-caregiver relationships in humans
• IMPRINTING: lorenz (1952) first observed imprinting when he was a child and his neighbour gave him a newly born duckling which followed him around
• lorenz procedure: classic experiment, he randomly split a large amount of geese eggs. half of these eggs were hatched with their mother goose in a natural environment and half of them were hatched from an incubator with the first moving thing they saw being lorenz
• lorenz findings: the control group who hatched with their mother followed her around everywhere and the incubator group followed lorenz everywhere. when the two groups were mixed up, the control group continued to follow their mother and the incubator group continued to follow lorenz (treating him how the control group treated their mother)

  this is called imprinting where bird species who are mmobile from birth (ducks and geese) attatch to the first moving thing that they see.
• lorenz found a critical period in which imprinting needed to happen, this can be as short as a couple of hours after birth, lorenz found that if they did not imprint in that time then they did not attatch themselves to any mother figure
• lorenz sexual imprinting: investigated the relationship between imprinting and male preference. he found that birds that imprinted on humans would later display coutship to humans. in acase study (1952) a peacock was raisied in the reptile house, the first ting seeing after birth was a giant tortoise, because of this later in life the peacock would only direct its courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises. lorenz concluded that the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting
• harlow carried out some of the most important research into attatchment, his work with rhesus monkeys which are much more similar to humans that lorenz's birds
• THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTACT COMFORT: harlow observed that new borns kept alone in a cage often died but they usually survived if they were given something soft like cloth to cuddle
• harlow's procedure: harlow (1958) tested the idea that a soft object often acted somewhat as a mother. in an experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire mother figures. in one condition the mother was made of wire and dispensed milk whereas in the second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth mother

  
• harlow's findings: the baby monkeys cuddled the cloth covered mother in preference to the wire mother and often sought confort from the cloth mother when they were scared (a noise from a mechanical teddy bear) regardless of which mother (wire or cloth) dispensed the milk. this showed that comfort was of more importance to the baby monkeys than food was when it came to attatchment behaviour
• harlow's maternally deprived monkeys as adults: harlow and collegues followed the monkeys who had been deprived of a 'real' mother through adulthood to see if early maternal deprivation had a longterm effect, the researchers found that there were severe consequences. the monkeys raised with the wire mother were the most dysfunctional but the ones reared with the cloth covered mother had also not been able to develop proper social behaviour. these monkeys were more aggresive and less sociable as well as bred less than other monkeys. if they had children they often negleted their young
• strength of lorenz’s study: research support

  a study by regolin and vallortigara supports the concept of imprinting. chicks were exposed to simple shape combinations that moved (eg a triangle with a rectangle in front) a series of shape combinations were then put in front of them and they followed the original most closely. supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on the first moving object that they see during the critical period
• limitation of lorenz’s research: generalizability to humans

  the ability to generalize findings and conclusions from birds to humans. the mammalian attachment system is different to that in birds. for example in mammals it’s a two part process, not only do children attach to their mother but mothers show an emotional attachment to their children. therefore it’s not appropriate to generalize lorenz’s ideas to humans
• strength of harlow’s study: real world value:

  helped social workers and child psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in development and allowing them to step in and try to help the outcome. also helped understand the importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos and wild breeding programs. means that harlow‘s research is not just theoretical but also practical
• limitation of harlow’s research: generalizability to humans

  the ability to generalize findings and conclusions from monkeys to humans. whilst rhesus monkeys are much more similar to humans than lorenz’s birds and all mammals share common attachment behaviors. however human brains are much more complex than monkeys. this means it may not be appropriate to generalize harlow’s findings to humans
• extra evaluation: limitation of harlow’s research: severe ethical issues. harlow’s research caused long term and severe distress to the monkeys however the conclusions from the research have both practical and theoretical applications