animal studies

• Ethologists conducted animal studies of the relationships between infant animals and their mothers.
• Lorenz's research suggests that organisms have a biological propensity to form attachments to one single subject, the first thing they see moving, a process called imprinting.
• In a study, half of a clutch of goose eggs were hatched with the mothers goose in their natural environment, the other half hatched in a incubator where the first moving object they saw was Konrad Lorenz.
• The incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere whereas the control group followed their mother, even when the two groups were mixed, indicating imprinting.
• Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place, depending on the species this can be as brief as a few hours after birth.
• If imprinting doesn’t occur within that time, chicks did not attach themselves to a mother figure.
• Lorenz's research also investigated the relationship between imprinting and adult mate preferences, observing that birds that had imprinted on a human would often later display courtship behaviour towards humans.
• In a case study, Lorenz described a peacock that had been reared in the reptile house of a zoo where the first moving objects the peacock saw after hatching were giant tortoises, to which the bird directed courtship behaviour as an adult.
• Lorenz concluded that this meant the peacock had undergone sexual imprinting.
• There is a problem generalising humans from birds to humans, as mammalian attachment systems are quite different from birds.
• Mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment than birds, and birds may be able to form attachments at anytime.
• It is not appropriate to try and generalise any of Lorenz's ideas to humans.
• Guiton et al (1966) found that chickens imprinted on yellow washing up gloves would try and mate with them as adults, but with experience they eventually prefer mating with other chickens, suggesting that the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent as Lorenz believed.
• Harlow's research disproved the belief that attachment is based only on physical needs, and suggested that love and comfort were more important in fostering attachment.
• New-borns kept alone in a bare cage usually died but usually survived if given something soft like a cloth to cuddle.
• Harlow reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire model 'mothers', one dispensed milk by a plain wire mother, the other by a cloth-covered mother.
• The baby monkey's cuddled the soft object in preference to the wire one, and sought comfort in the cloth one when frightened regardless of which suspended milk.
• Maternally deprived monkeys reared with wire mothers only were most dysfunctional, while those reared with the soft toy were more aggressive and less sociable, breeding less and neglecting their young.
• Harlow concluded that there was a critical period for normal development within 90 days.
• Harlow's research had a profound effect on psychologists' understanding of human mother infant attachment, showing that attachment does not develop as the result of being fed by a mother figure but as a result of contact comfort.
• Harlow's research also had important applications in a range of practical contexts, helping social workers understand risk factors in child neglect and abuse and prevent it, and also important in the care of captive monkeys.
• Harlow's research was criticized for the ethics of his research and the suffering of the monkeys, with Harlow referring to the wire mothers as 'iron maidens'.