AO1 Harlow

• Why did Harlow conduct this study?

  Behaviourists supported the view that babies learn to become attached to their mothers because they provide food. Harlow and other social & cognitive psychologists argued this perspective overlooked the important of contact comfort
• What did Harlow work with in his study?

  Rhesus monkeys
• Harlow observed that newborns kept alone in a bare cage usually died but that they usually survived if given something soft like a cloth to cuddle
• What was the procedure of Harlow’s study?

  In one experiment he reared 16 baby monkeys with two wire model ‘mothers’. In one condition milk was dispensed by the plain wire mother whereas in a second condition the milk was dispensed by the cloth covered mother.
• What were the findings of Harlow’s study?

  The baby monkeys cuddled the soft object in preference to

  the wire one and sought comfort from the cloth one when frightened regardless of which dispensed milk. This showed that ‘contact comfort’ was of more importance to the monkeys than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
• What is contact comfort?

  The positive emotional response that infants experience from physical contact with their caregiver.
• What did the findings of Harlow’s study show?

  Contact comfort is more important than food when it comes to attachment behaviour
• What did Harlow say was the critical period in monkeys?

  90 days
• After the critical period of 90 days, attachment was impossible and the damage done was irreversible
• Harlow found that early maternal deprivation had a permanent effect on the behaviour of monkeys into adulthood
• Which moneys were the most dysfunctional?

  The ones reared with wire mothers only
• Even those reared with a soft toy as a substitute did not develop normal social behaviour.
• The maternally deprived monkeys were more aggressive and less sociable than other monkeys
• The maternally deprived monkeys bred less often than it typical for monkeys
• What were the maternally deprived monkeys like as mothers?

  Often neglected their young and others attacked their children, even killing them in some cases