Lorenz

• Lorenz - investigating imprinting in non human animals
• Lorenz - randomly divided greylag goose eggs into two groups:

  group one - control - hatched by the mother

  group two - experimental - hatched inside incubator
• Lorenz marked the goslings so he knew which group they were in. He then put them under a box, and then released the box.

  The group that hatched by the mother ran to her, and the incubator group ran to Lorenz.

  The incubator group had no attachment with their mother
• Lorenz found that imprinting takes place within a critical period of 4 - 25 hours and it is irreversible
• AO3. Lorenz studied animals, meaning that his findings cannot be generalised to humans. Human development and behaviour is much more complex than bird species. We can not conclude that humans will Behave in the same way as birds. This means we must be careful when applying this study
• AO3. Lorenz has research support for the existence of imprinting. Guiton found that chickens imprinted on yellow gloves as they were the largest moving object they saw when they hatched. They would then try to mate with the gloves in adulthood, showing evidence of imprinting during the critical period. However Lorenz says that imprinting is irreversible, but Guiton found that chickens could learn to mate with other chickens after spending time with them.