Lorenz

• what did lorenz aim to do

  to investigate the mechanisms of imprinting that occur when infants follow and form an attachment to the first large moving object they see when they're born
• what was the procedure lorenz used

  1. he split a large group of greyleg goose eggs into two groups. one was hatched naturally by the mother and the other group hatched in an incubator. for the ones hatched in the incubator, Lorenz was the first moving object that the goslings saw. their behaviour after this was recorded
  2. he marked all of the goslings so thhat he could tell which were from which group. he placed them under a box them removed it and recorded their behaviour [whether or not they went to him or the real mother]
• what did lorenz find

  immediately after being born, the naturally hatched goslings followed their mother around. the incubator hatched group followed lorenz around. when they were released from the box the naturally hatched group went straight to their mother, while the incubator hatched group went to lorenz and showed they had no bond to their natural mother. these bonds were observed to be irreversible, the naturally hatched goslings only followed their mother and incubated group only followed lorenz. imprinting would only occur within a critical period of 4 - 25 hours after hatching.
• what did lorenz find happened long after the goslings had imprinteed on them?

  they would attempt to mate with humans
• what did lorenz conclude

  that imprinting is a form of attachment, displayedd mainly by bird that leave the nest early, where close contact is kept with the first large moving object encountered
• evaluate lorenz's study

  + field experiment therefore high ecological validity

  + findings are reliable because its been repeated with the same results
• evaluate lorenzs study

  - only investigated one species [geese] so its not possible to generalise to other species [humans]

  - arguably unethical, as it permenantly damaged the geese as the effects were irreversible

  - research by Guiton found that chickens that imprinted on an object [rubber glove] and attempted to mate with that object as adults learnt to mate with members of their own species