Animal studies

• What is a critical period? What is imprinting?


  • Critical period: takes place during an animal's first years of living where attachments must be formed before it may never develop e.g. for geese this must be hours after hatching
  • Imprinting: when animals form attachments with the first moving object they see
• What research is there on imprinting?

  • Lorenz (1952) randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs - half hatched with their mothers in their natural environment and the other half hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz
  • Control group followed the mother everywhere and the incubator group followed Lorenz everywhere
  • Even when both groups were mixed up, they still continued to follow the presence of whoever they saw during their critical periods - incubator group had no recognition of their real mother
• What is sexual imprinting?

  • Animals innate ability to recognize and form preferences for mates based on the first moving object or animal they see after birth e.g. who they imprinted on
  • Lorenz (1952) case study found that a peacock who imprinted on a giant tortoise would only direct courtship behaviour towards other giant tortoises as an adult
• What is one strength of research into imprinting?

  • Research support for imprinting: Regolin and Vallortigara (1995) exposed chicks to a range of moving shape combinations and found that they followed the first one they saw most closely
  • Supports the view that young animals are born with an innate mechanism to imprint on a present moving object in their critical window of development, as predicted by Lorenz
• What is one limitation of research into imprinting?

  • Low generalisability: hard to generalise findings and conclusions from birds to humans
  • Mammalian attachment system is different + more complex to birds e.g. mammals attachment is a 2-way process, meaning mothers also show an emotional attachment to their young
  • Suggests that it is probably not appropriate to generalise Lorenz' findings to humans considering the stark differences between humans and birds
• What is another strength of research into imprinting?

  • Highly influential within developmental psychology: imprinting is now seen to be irreversible, suggesting attachment formation is under biological control and happens within a specific time frame
  • Lead developmental psychologists like Bowlby to develop well-recognised theories of attachment involving critical periods and such theories have had considerable impact on the way childcare is administered today
• What is another limitation of research into imprinting?

  • Guiton (1966) looked at chickens who imprinted on yellow gloves made to look like moving hands
  • Found that they eventually gave up trying to mate with the gloves and moved on to mating with other chickens
  • Shows impact of imprinting is not as permanent as Lorenzo suggests
• What was Harlow's research?

  • Harlow (1958): reared 16 baby monkeys with a plain-wire model 'mother' and a cloth-covered model 'mother', both of which dispensed milk in different conditions
  • Found that the babies cuddled the cloth mother and sought comfort from them when frightened in preference to the plain-wire, regardless of which one dispensed milk
  • Shows that contact comfort was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour
• What else did Harlow find?

  • Followed maternally deprived monkeys into adulthood to assess any permanent effects - found that the monkeys reared with the plain-wire mother were the most dysfunctional but the cloth-covered ones also had abnormal social behaviour
  • They were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys, breeding less
  • When they did become mothers some neglected their young and attacked their children, even killing them in some cases
  • Harlow concluded there was a critical period for attachment formation which was 90 days for monkeys - after this damage done from early deprivation was irreversible
• What is one strength of Harlow's research?

  • Real-world application: has helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience can act as a risk factor in child development
  • Howe (2008) says this allows for intervention to prevent poor outcomes - means the value of Harlow's research is not just theoretical but also practical, increasing its' usefulness
• What is one limitation of Harlow's research?

  • Low generalisability: although rhesus monkeys are more similar to humans than Lorenz' birds considering all mammals share some attachment behaviours in common
  • We cannot ignore that the human brain and human behaviour is still much more emotionally and socially complicated than that of monkeys, meaning it is likely not fully appropriate to generalise Harlow's findings to humans
• What is another limitation of Harlow's research?

  • Ethical issues: Harlow's research caused severe and long-term distress to the monkeys and a lot were treated poorly during the investigation, they were starved and kept malnourished for the sake of the study
  • This raises ethical concerns for their physical wellbeing and weakens the reliability of the study as it cannot be replicated due to the obvious ethical issues, meaning we cannot achieve consistency in findings