ANIMAL STUDIES OF ATTACHMENT

Created by

Krichelle Ahorro

Cards (4)

LORENZ (1952) IMPRINTING
Procedure
Lorenz randomly divided a lard clutch of goose eggs:
One half were hatched with the mother goose in their natural environment.
Other half were hatched in an incubator where the first moving object they saw was Lorenz.
Mixed all goslings together to see whom they would follow.
Lorenz also observed birds and their later courtship behaviour.
LORENZ (1952) IMPRINTING
Findings and conclusions
Incubator group followed Lorenz, the control group followed the mother.
Lorenz identified a critical period in which imprinting needs to take place, e.g few hours after hatching.
If imprinting did not occur within that time, chicks did not attach themselves to the mother figure.
Sexual imprinting occurs whereby the birds acquire a template of the desirable characteristics required in a mate.
HARLOW (1958) IMPORTANCE OF CONTACT COMFORT
Procedure
Harlow reared 16 rhesus monkeys with 2 wire model ‘mothers’:
Condition 1 = milk was dispensed by the plain-wire ‘mother’
Condition 2 = milk was dispensed by the cloth-covered ‘mother’
The monkeys’ preferences were measured.
To measure attachment-like behaviour, Harlow observed how the monkeys reacted when placed in frightening situations. For example, Harlow added a noisy mechanical teddy bear to the environment.
Harlow and his colleagues also continued to study the monkeys who had been deprived of their ‘real’ mother into adulthood.
HARLOW (1958) IMPORTANCE OF CONTACT COMFORT
Findings and conclusions
Baby monkeys cuddled the cloth-covered mother in preference to the plain-wire mother regardless of which dispensed milk. This suggests that contact comfort was of more importance than food when it came to attachment behaviour.
The monkeys sought comfort from the cloth-covered mother when frightened.
As adults, the monkeys who had been deprived of their real mothers suffered severe consequences - they were more aggressive, less sociable and less skilled in mating than other monkeys.