animal studies : Lorenz

• Konrad Lorenz was a what?

  Ethologist
• What does an ethologist do?

  Studying animal behaviour under relatively natural conditions
• What animals did Lorenz study?

  Goslings
• What was Lorenz's first step in his research?

  Took a clutch of goose eggs and kept them until they were about to hatch out
• What were the two conditions in Lorenz's study?

  Half of the eggs were then placed with their natural mother, while Lorenz kept the other half in an incubator
• What happened when the incubator eggs hatched?

  The first living (moving) thing they saw was Lorenz
• How did Lorenz test the effects of imprinting?

  Lorenz marked the two groups to distinguish them and placed them together with both Lorenz and the mother goose present
• What was Lorenz's main finding?

  The goslings quickly divided themselves up, one group following their natural mother and the others following Lorenz
• What was distinctive about Lorenz's brood?

  Showed no recognition of their mother
• Lorenz noted a critical period for imprinting. What is a critical period?


  Imprinting is restricted to a very definite period of the young animal's life
• How long is the critical period for imprinting?

  Two days
• The critical period suggests that imprinting is what?

  Innate
• What two features of imprinting did Lorenz note?

  Irreversible and long-lasting
• What was an example of long-lasting imprinting in Lorenz's study?

  One of the geese who imprinted on him, called Martina, used to sleep on his bed every night
• Early imprinting also had an effect on what?


  Later mate preferences
• What are later mate preferences called?

  Sexual imprinting
• What does sexual imprinting mean?


  Animals (especially birds) will choose to mate with the same kind of object upon which they were imprinted
• How is Lorenz's sample flawed when studying human attachment?

  Lorenz studied goslings
• Why is studying goslings problematic?

  Mammal attachment is more complex than attachment in birds
• Why is mammal attachment is more complex than attachment in birds?

  Mammal mothers show more emotion
• Why is it a weakness that Lorenz studied goslings?


  It is likely that Lorenz's findings don't apply to humans
• Who conducted contradictory research against Lorenz's findings?

  Guiton et al. (1966)
• What did Guiton et al. (1966) find?

  Chickens imprinted on washing up gloves would try to mate with the gloves as adults but eventually learnt to prefer mating with other chickens
• How does Guiton et al. (1966) contradict Lorenz?

  Debates the idea that imprinting is irreversible
• What is a strength of Lorenz's research?

  Lorenz has contributed to our understanding of human attachment
• How has Lorenz has contributed to our understanding of human attachment?

  His ideas were influential to Bowlby's Monotropy theory.
• Which of Bowlby's ideas were influenced by Lorenz?

  Adaptive, Critical period, Internal working model