Animal studies: Lorenz

• Animal studies

  Ethologists are biologists who study animal

  behaviour in the natural environment. 

  Lots of psychological/ethological studies 

  have been carried out on non-human animal species rather than on humans, either for ethical or practical reasons.

  Practical = Animals breed faster and researchers are interested in seeing results across more than one generation of animals
• What is imprinting?

  = Where offspring follow the first 

  large-moving object they see.
• Lorenz - Procedure

  Lorenz carried out an experiment 

  with 12 grey lag geese.

  He randomly allocated them

  into two experimental conditions.

  • CONDITION 1: 6 hatched in an incubator. Lorenz was the first moving object seen by the goose chicks after they hatched

  CONDITION 2: 6 hatched with mother goose in their natural environment. The mother goose was the first moving object seen by the chicks after they hatched
• Lorenz - Findings

  -The chicks who saw him before anything else, followed him as if he was their mother.  When they were adults, they performed mating displays to him, and ignored other geese.

  -The chicks who saw their mother first, followed her when young, and performed mating rituals to other geese in adult life.

  Lorenz also found that goose chicks seemed to have a ‘critical period’ of just a few hours in which to imprint (form an attachment). 

  If they didn’t imprint within this time, they never would.
• Lorenz - Conclusions

  It supports the view that having a biological basis for an attachment is adaptive as it promotes survival. 

  This would explain why goslings imprint after a matter of minutes due to their increased mobility; human babies are born immobile and therefore there is less call for them to form an attachment straight away, and so, this develops later (8-9 months).
• Lorenz - Sexual imprinting 

  Lorenz also investigated relationships between imprinting and adult mate preferences.

  He observed that birds that imprinted on humans would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans.

  In a case study: A peacock reared in a reptile house in a zoo, the first moving objects it saw were giant tortoises. As an adult, this bird would only direct courtship behaviour towards giant tortoises

  = Lorenz concluded that it had undergone sexual imprinting
• AO3 - Evaluation

  (-) issue with generalisation and conclusion from birds to humans

  Lorenz was interested in imprinting in birds. Although some of his findings have influenced our understanding of human development, there is a problem generalising from findings on birds to humans. For example, mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to their young than birds do.

  = this means that it is inappropriate to generalise Lorenz’s ideas to humans
• AO3 - Evaluation

  (+) support for the concept of imprinting. 

  For example, Guiton et. al found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try to mate with them as adults (as Lorenz would have predicted) 

  =This suggests that young animals are born with innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object during critical period

  HOWEVER

  With experience they eventually learned to prefer mating with other chickens.

  = This suggests that the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.
• What is the main issue regarding the critical period in imprinting according to Sluckin (1966)?


  Sluckin questioned whether there actually was a critical period for imprinting.
• What did Sluckin do to investigate the critical period of imprinting?


  He replicated Lorenz’s research using ducklings instead of goslings.
• What was the outcome of Sluckin's experiment with the isolated duckling?


  He found that imprinting was still possible even after keeping the duckling isolated for five days.
• What conclusion did Sluckin reach regarding the critical period for imprinting?


  He concluded that the critical period was actually a sensitive period for imprinting.
• How did Sluckin redefine the concept of the critical period in his findings?


  He defined it as a sensitive period, a time best for imprinting but not exclusive for forming attachments.