animal studies

• evolution

  • useful features are introduced into a species to help survival and so successfully reproduce
  • need to be well adapted
• ethologist

  are biologist who study animals behaviour in their natural environment 
• why were animal studies useful ?

  • in understanding caregiver-infant interactions in humans
  • interested how young animals attach to their mother
  • we can generalise to humans
• imprinting


  when an animal attaches to and follows the first moving object they see
• Lorez - to find out how many grey lag geese form attachment

  • randomly split up eggs randomly
  • experimental condition : half the number of eggs in incubator and when they hatched saw Lorenz
  • conditional condition: other half with their mothers in natural environment
• finding - Lorenz

  • chicks that saw Lorenz followed Lorenz as if he was their mothers between 13-16 hours after hatching
  • chicks that saw their mother followed her
• sexual imprinting


  bird that imprinted on a human would show courtship behaviour with humans
• what are the long lasting effects identified by Lorenz 

  identified that there is a critical period for imprinting and so attachment to occur as little as a few hours for some bird species
• Harlows monkey - find out how contact comfort is to a monkey

  • tested the idea that a soft object serves some of the functions of a mother
  • reared 16 baby monkeys with 2 wire mothers , 
  • one plain wire dispensed milk and other milk dispensed from cloth covered mother
• finding - Harlow's

  • baby monkeys cuddled with the cloth, sought comfort when frightned from noise regardless of which mother dispensed the milk
  • shows tha conatct comfort was morre important to the monkey than food when it came to attachment behaviour
• long lasting effects - Harlow


  dreadful effects on the monkeys which were worse if they were raised by the wire monkey but were also terrible if raised by cloth covered
• researchers found severe consequences, monkey....

  with the plain wired one were the most dysfunctional one

  • cloth covered mother did not develop normal social behaviour
  • these monkeys were aggressive and less social
  • neglected their child and even killing them 
• critical period

  mother figure had been introduced to young monkey within 90 days for an attachment,

   

  attachment was impossible and the damage was done by early deprivation became irreversible
• one limitation of Harlows research ability to generalise findings and conclusions from monkeys to humans

  • monkeys are much more similar to humans than birds and mammals share the common attachment behaviours
  • however , human brain and behaviour is much more complex than of monkeys
  • may not be an appropriate to generalise to humas
• one strength of harlows research is that it has real world application

  • helped social workers and clinical psychologists understand that a lack of bonding experience may be a risk factor in child development allowing them to intervene and prevent poor outcome
  • understand the importance of attachment figures for a baby monkey in zoos and breeding programmes
  • value of Harlows research is not just theoretical but also practical
• One strength of Lorenz research is the existence of supports for the concept of imprinting

  • a study by Lucia Regolin and Vallortigara supports Lorenz idea of imprinting
  • chicks were exposed to simple  shaped combinations that moved eg triangle with rectangle and followed the original most closely
  • supports the view that young animals were born with an innate mechanism to imprint on moving objects present
• one limitation of Lorenz studies is the ability to generalise findings from bird to humans

  • mammalian attachment is different and more complex than in birds
  • mammals have a 2 ways system , so it is not just the young but also the mother
  • probably not appropriate to generalise Lorenz idea to humans