Animal studies

• What is imprinting?

  Innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the mother which takes place during a specific time in development, first few hours after birth. If it doesn’t happen at this time it will probably never happen
• Describe the effects and findings of harlow's study on the rhesus monkeys

  • socially and sexually abnormal- froze/fled from other monkeys, didn't show normal mating behaviour
  • poor parents- didn't cradle own babies
  • long-lasting effects
  • Recovered from having surrogate mothers by interacting with other monkeys- reversible
  • Before 3 months but NOT AFTER 6 months
• Describe the effects and findings of Lorenz's study on the goslings

  • critical period of imprinting- two days
  • irreversible
  • long-lasting- one of the geese used to sleep with lorenz nightly
  • effect on later mate preferences (sexual imprinting) animals want to mate with same kind of object upon which they sexually imprinted with at birth
• How many days did Harlow rear his rhesus monkeys?

  165
• State one advantage and one disadvantage of Lorenz’s research

  • 😊Research support for imprinting- Guiton with leghorn chicks and yellow rubber gloves- animals born with the predisposition to imprint on the first moving thing they see- tried to reproduce with the gloves- linked to later reproductive behaviour
  • ☹️dispute over imprinting characteristics- not irreversible as Lorenz claimed (plastic and forgiving mechanism) Guiton found he could reverse chicks behaviour
• State an advantage and disadvantage of Harlow‘s research

  • 😊generalising the study to human behaviour- number of studies found observations of animal attachment are mirrored in humans. supports shaffer and emerson that infants not necessarily attached to the person that feeds them
  • ☹️ confounding variable- two heads were different and varied systematically with the IV- which was which mother had the bottle. Cloth covered may have had more attractive head- lacks internal validity