1 animal studies of attachment AO1 + A03

what is attachment?

refers to the deep and enduring emotional bond between infants and primary caregivers. It influences their interaction and human development.

when attached, infants:

• seeks proximity, esp when stressed

• distress on separation, pleasure reunited

• secure base behaviour - infants explore hppily, but return to attachment figure

research into imprinting and the critical period (AMRC)

Lorenz (1935)

A: inv imprinting

M: Lorenz split a clutch of goose eggs into 2 batches, one naturally hatched with mother, one in a incubator, with lorenz being the first MO. also varied time between birth and seeing MO : measures critical period for imprinting

R: Incubator group followed Lorenz, naturally hatched followed their mother. when mixed groups, they continued to follow each group. a CP of 4-25 hours, if not imprinted at that time, didn’t occur

C: There’s a critical period for attachment, once imprinted, cannot be reversed.

what is critical period?

certain amount of time for someone attach. if they don’t attach within this time, they won’t form any other attachment and cause problems and consequences in later life

research into factors impacting attachment (AMRC)

Harlow + Harlow ( 1959)

A: determine food or comfort was the important factor of attachment

M: harlow removed 16 baby rhesus monkeys from their mothers and placed them in cages with 2 surrogate mothers; cloth (no milk), wired (milk)

he measured:

• time spent with each mother

• time feeding

• mother preference during stress (mechanical monster: noise) - cloth mother

R: monkeys preferred the cloth mother during stress when given choice. monkeys with onky the wired mother showed signs of stress. some monkeys had consequences like agression and less emotional, compared to monkeys with mother monkeys.

C: comfort is more important than food, long term effects of attachment deprivation.

AO3 PEEL : weakness (generalisability)

P: issue of generalisability to humans

E: less appropiate to generalise lorenz’s fundings as the attachment system to birds - much less complex to humans, as involves less emotions

E: however, harlow’s study can be said to be more similar to humans than geese; Green (1994) states that mammals have the same brain structure as humans

L: however neither sample is human, so it can be argued that we can’t generalise both of these studies to explain human attachment

AO3 PEEL: weakness (unethical)

p: unethicak regarding harm to animals

e: animals couldn’t consent/withdraw, and cause psychological harm

e: counter argument is that we cannot perform these studies onto human infants but however produced valuable insights to attachment - bowlby

l: using a cost - benefit analysis, the ethicaks can outweigh the insights

AO3 PEEL: strength (generalisability)

p: despite limitations, animak studies have made a significant contribution to human attachment

e: lorenz’s concept of a critical period influenced bowlby’s theory into monotropy - 2.5 yeats of CP into infants

e: harlow’s showed consequences of early neglect in childhood and of poor attachment again influencing bowlby’s internal working model

l: regardless of being able to fully generalise animals, the findings are significant to understanding human attachment and how to improve and strengthen it