animal studies

• lorenz had focused on imprinting
• imprinting happens right after birth
• within the first few hours of birth the geese latch themselves onto the first living and moving thing
• procedure:

  • lorenz had tested this by keeping half of the gosling’s eggs and the other half of the gosling’s eggs had remained with the mother geese
  • he had then found that once the goslings had hatched they had attached to him and therefore they had imprinted on him
• findings:

  • if goslings do not imprint or attach there will be a difficulty of them surviving
  • but if they do survive there will be difficulties for them in terms of interacting with other animals
  • in addition to this if they had not imprinted in the first few hours they will not be able to imprint in the future
• lorenz had also looked at a peacock which had hatched by a number of giant tortoises
• as this peacock had imprint to these reptiles it had formed sexual imprinting
• this is because the peacock had wanted to mate with these reptiles rather then peacocks itself

  ^ links to bowlby’s critical period
• learning theory suggests that if you feed a baby then the baby will become attached to the person providing food
• harlow and contact comfort - a test of the cupboard love theory, that babies love mothers because they feed them
• harlow’s procedure:

  • infant monkeys were removed from their biological mothers and placed in cages with surrogate mothers
  • one surrogate mother provided milk but not comfort as its body was constructed of exposed wire; the other surrogate mother provided comfort as the wire was covered with a cloth; the cloth mother did not provide food
  • time spent with the mother was recorded, as well as which surrogate the infant ran to when frightened by a mechanical monkey
• the infant monkeys spent most of their time with the comfort-providing ‘cloth mother’ only visiting the ‘food mother’ when they needed to eat but quickly returning to the cloth mother for comfort
• the infant monkeys returned to the cloth mother when frightened. and monkeys without access to a cloth mother showed signs of stress and related illness
• in follow up studies, harlow found that the maternal deprivation his studies had caused resulted in permanent social disordered in the monkeys as adults, including difficulty in mating behaviour and raising their offspring
• harlow had also found that:

  • once the babies were reintroduced to their mothers - not all of their mothers had taken them on and some of them were left as orphans
  • whereas others were not accepted immediately
  • in addition to this the ones that were able to mate and have kids had struggled themselves
  • as they did not know how to raise their children - some of them had killed their children, or would just leave them for hours and hours - the same way that they had experienced
• AO3(problems with generalising):

  • can not generalise animal behaviour with humans
  • humans critical period is much more longer then animals but also human development is much more complex
  • harlow’s is slightly better but still isn’t up there
• AO3(theoretical value):

  • highlights the significance of the presence of the mother
  • also gives us insight and education on the critical period
  • useful for mothers, teachers, hospitals
  • allows us to see why a child is a way they are
• AO3(animal application):

  • zoos now have to breed animals in captivity in a certain way
  • if an animal is not taking on their child there needs to be rapid steps taken as of imprinting
  • they will therefore need to imprint on a substitute mother
• AO3(ethical implications):

  • psychological and physical harm to these baby animals
  • there was greater stress for these animals and this led to long lasting impacts
  • harlow had argued that even though we are harming these animals there is a benefit through this as we are unable to do this with a baby
  • there is a cost benefit analysis as the benefits outweighs the costs
• AO3(are we observing imprinting):

  • guiton had imprinted chickens on yellow rubber gloves and had found that they would follow him if he was wearing these yellow rubber gloves
  • they then had began to try to mate with the yellow rubber gloves but then eventually went to their own species
  • the effects of imprinting do not really last in the future
  • and is mainly a survival mechanism