animal studies

• why animal studies

  • similar to humans - primates also make early bonds between parents and offspring
  • unethical to use humans - depriving them of attachments and love etc
  • no demand characteristics
  • however, not the same as humans - hard to generalise
• ethical guidelines for animal studies

  • ends must justify means
  • reasonable efforts to minimise animals discomfort, illness and pain
• lorenz 1953

  • 12 greylag geese (goslings) eggs, 6 hatched with their mother (control group) and 6 in an incubator with lorenz as the first seen moving object
  • the control group followed the mother goose everywhere, second group followed lorenz
  • marked eggs to indicate group, let them out of upturned box and each gosling wen straight to its 'mother figure'
  • lorenz goslings showed no recognition to their real mother
• • in some of lorenz experiments, tried to get young ducks and goslings to imprint on inanimate objects such as wellington boots
  • stephen lea 1984, proposed that instinct give the chicks the concept or template of mother, but environment has to supply the details
• imprinting

  • innate (born with) process
  • happens during specific time (critical period)
  • rapid and irreversible
• critical period

  • time in which imprinting needs to take place
  • 12-24hrs for birds
• lorenz

  • suggest that attachment is innate and due to biological adaptations to survive
  • 'survival of the fittest' - attach for food and shelter
• can lorenz study be generalised to humans?

  • no - geese imprint in first few hours, but humans take around 7 months.
  • attachment is different for geese and humans
  • geese mothers do not reciprocate
• harlow 1958

  a = if soft object serves same functions as mother

  p = 16 baby rhesus monkeys and two wire model mothers

  condition 1 - milk dispensed by plain wire mother

  condition 2 - milk dispensed by cloth covered mother

  f = both groups spent more time with the cloth mother, even if she had no milk. infants in group 2 - only went to the wire mother when hungry, once fed returned to cloth mother. if frightening object in room, took refuge with cloth mother. infant explored more when cloth mother was present
• harlow 1958 - once grown up, if with surrogate mother for more than 90 days (critical period)

  • more timid
  • didn't know how to behave with other monkeys, often aggressive
  • difficulty mating
  • females were inadequate mothers, even killed offspring

  those left less than 90 days, if placed in normal environment, effects could be reversed and can form attachments

  those lef
• harlow concluded that 'contact comfort' from cloth mother was more important than food in the formation of attachment, but not sufficient enough for healthy development. early maternal deprivation leads to emotional damage but impact can be reversed if attachment was made before the end of the critical period. if after, no amount of exposure to mothers or peers could alter the emotional damage already occurred
• harlow, application to humans

  • humans and monkeys both form reciprocal attachments, as they have similar traits the findings can be generalised
  • primates - social animals, very similar to humans
  • but as monkeys critical period is 90days, this is different to humans being 6-7 months
  • more generalisable than goslings, but still not accurate
• harlow, application to everyday life

  understand children need comfort and love (emotional needs) not just food (physical needs), so revolutionised treatment of orphan children. moved from care homes to foster homes
• harlow, ethical issues

  severe consequences for monkeys later life, become permanently damaged
• lorenz findings can't be generalised to humans, as the mammalian attachment system of humans is different to birds. mammalian mothers show more emotional attachments at anytime but birds have a briefer period (12-24hrs). mammalian attachment is reciprocal
• lorenz conclusions have been questioned. guiton et al 1966, chickens that imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try mate with it as adults, but that experince teaches them to prefer mating with other chickens. suggests impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as lorenz believed
• ethical concerns as monkeys are similar to humans and can be generalised, the suffering was human-like. harlow was aware of suffering he caused as he called the wire mothers iron maidens, after a medieval torture device. however, harlows research was sufficiently important, so justify effects
• harlows research has helped social workers to understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse, and so interfere to prevent it (work of howe 1998) also understand importance of attachment figures for baby monkeys in zoos & breading programmes means that harlows research has benefitted both animals and humans