A03

• * practical applications for animal studies?

  • harlow showed not forming att can lead to severe dysfunction in later life
  • has helped us in real world to benefit children
  • social workers used h research to understand risk factors in child neglect & abuse so can intervene & prevent it
  • e.g neglected child can be placed in care system/adopted - ensures they receive appropriate care to enable them to form att bonds with mother figure.
  • findings of research have been utilised to support human infants in real world
• X evidence to contradict lorenz's research?

  • guiton et al 1966 found young chicks imprinted on yellow washing up gloves & would try mate with them as adults
  • with experience they learnt to prefer mating with other chickens.
  • proposes impact of imprinting on mating behaviour & later relationships not permanent as originally believed
  • must be other important factors when forming att at birth
• X problems generalising to humans?

  • lorenz interested in imprinting in geese
  • attachment style of mammals quite different from that in birds
  • e.g mammalian mums show more emotional att to infants that do birds
  • harlow studied monkeys which are more similar to humans
  • are still huge differences such as cognitive abilities/use of language/social systems
  • concepts such as imprinting & contact-comfort may not be applicable to all species
  • difficult to generalise findings of research to att in humans
• X ethical issues?

  • pro - benefit to study animal att instead of humans would be far too unethical to carry out research on human infants
  • since would involve maternal deprivation to see att behaviour
  • breaks guideline of protection from harm
  • con - if its too unethical to study human att then should be same for animals
  • h research very unethical as monkeys deprived from mothers
  • may have experienced distress & potential psychological harm
  • ? integrity
  • can be argued that animals have right to not be studied/harmed in pursuit of academic conclusions for human benefits
• X cvs influenced harlows research?

  • 2 stimulus objects varied in more ways than being cloth covered/not
  • heads of 2 mothers varied alot
  • cloth mothers face resembled an actual monkey
  • may have acted as cv as monkeys may have bonded with cloth mum & sought refuge not because provided comfort but instead was more familiar
  • ? internal
  • cvs impacted results
  • difficult to establish cause & effect relationship between importance of contact-comfort & formation of att bond