animal studies

• lorenz studied imprinting through the geese study
• imprinting means that the first moving object a new born sees becomes the object they follow
• lorenz procedure;

  -split geese into two groups

  -half eggs hatched in front of him (experimental group)

  -half eggs hatched in front of mother (control group)
• lorenz findings;

  -experimental condition geese followed him and control followed mum. even when back together the experimental group still followed him
• imprinting in geese ocours within the first hours of being born and determines their survival. babies also go through this critical period were they attach to a primary caregiver to secure their survival
• Lorenz also investigated relationships between imprinting and adult male preferences. he study a peacock that the first object ot saw after hatching was a giant tortoise. he found that as an adult the peacock would only direct courtship to giant tortoises
• harlow conducted a study in 1958 to see babies preference when searching for mothers attention (food vs comfort)
• harlows procedure had rhesus monkeys put with two fake mothers in a bare cage. both mothers were present at all time with one being a cloth mother (no food) and the other being a wire mother with pumped food. he found the baby monkeys spent 15-17hr a day with the cloth mother meaning they preferred comfort over food.
• harlows variations;

  1-monkeys were introduced in a cage with a scary noise with both mothers. they found monkeys ran every time towards the cloth mother.

  2.monkeys introduced in strange cage with wire or cloth mother. with the wire mother the monkeys were scared in the cage but with the cloth the monkey happily explored
• maternal deprivation in monkeys-

  monkeys developed abnormal social behaviours, they wouldn't interact with others and harmed themselves. Harlow also set females to males and bred them which resulted in disturbed mothers who even killed their babies however the monkeys still returned to mothers.
• animal studies are not generalisable as they cannot be directly generalised to humans
• animal studies are not reliable. lorenz study can be replicated but is difficult as it isn’t controlled. harlow cannot be replicated as it breaks ethical guidelines
• animals studies are applicable and can be applied to parents, foster homes and educators ect.
• animal studies lack external validity as lorenz isnt as natural as real life context and harlow is very controlled
• harlow study has internal validity as its findings show what they aimed to study. lorenz does not and his findings might be impacted by extraneous variables
• harlow study breaks ethical guidelines as it causes harm to the monkeys however lorenz does not
• Guiton (1966) used chicks and yellow rubber gloves to feed them during the critical period, and the chicks were imprinted on the glove.