lorenz

• Imprinting: the formation of a permanent emotional bond with the first large moving object seen. This is innate (i.e. not learnt) and requires no other stimulus apart from visual. This leads to an animal following the ‘object’ they have become imprinted to.
• Took a sample of eggs and divided them into two. One half was naturally hatched in the presence of the mother goose. The other half were taken into an incubator, and hatched by Lorenz, who made sure he was the first large moving object seen. 
• Found that the naturally hatched goslings followed the mother, and the artificially hatched goslings followed Lorenz, even when mixed together. Also found evidence of a critical window, where if the goslings did not see a large moving object within the first 32 hours, no imprinting would occur at all. 
• -animal studies are difficult to generalise to humans, as humans are qualitatively different, with differences in neural structure, neural chemistry, and social factors, which all play a role in how we behave. Geese are particularly different to humans, and so in the case of attachment research, where it might not be appropriate to conduct on human participants, animals that are more closely related to humans may serve as a more representative sample (e.g. Harlow’s monkeys) 
• -Subsequent similar studies with chickens have found that imprinting can be reversed. Chicks were shown a yellow rubber glove as their first ‘large moving object’ and became imprinted to it, but this imprinting was reversed and the chicks became imprinted to other members of their species, suggesting that imprinting was not innate, but rather like any other form of learning. 
• A strength of Lorenz’s research is that there is further research that supports the concept on imprinting. For example, Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) exposed chicks to simple shape combinations that moved, such as a triangle with a rectangle in front. A range of shape combinations were then moved in front of them, and it was found that the chicks followed the original combination of shapes most closely. This therefore supports Lorenz’s proposal that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a moving object present in the critical window of development.
• While Lorenz’s research demonstrated imprinting in animals, the extent to which his findings should be generalised to

  humans can be questioned. It appears that the attachment system in mammals is different to that of birds, with mammalian mothers showing more emotional attachment to their young and mammals potentially being able to form attachments at any time, unlike birds.

  This therefore suggests that Lorenz’s findings should not be generalised to humans as there are clear differences in the attachment systems that are displayed.