Animal studies of attachment

Animal studies of attachment

Look at the formation of early bonds between non-human parents and their offspring. Interesting to psychologists because attachment-like behaviour is common in a range of species so animal studies can help us understand attachment in humans

Imprinting

Innate readiness to develop a strong bond with the mother which takes place during a specific time in development [usually first few hours after birth/hatching]

• There is a critical period - if this doesn’t happen at this time it probably won’t happen

• It is irreversible and long-lasting

Sexual imprinting

Idea that imprinting can affect adult mate preferences. Animals will choose to mate with the same kind of object upon which they were imprinted

Research support

Lorenz [1935] : divided a clutch of goose eggs into two groups. One was left with mother and the other placed in an incubator with the first thing they saw being Lorenz.

• Found that after mixing the geese up, they divided themselves following either the mother or Lorenz.

• Imprinting to restricted to a definite period of time [critical period] and if an animal has not seen a moving object with this time it will not imprint

• Imprinting is similar to attachment in that it binds the young to their caregiver

Evaluation strength [lorenz]

Guitton [1966] found that chickens exposed to rubber gloves for imprinting did imprint on them and attempted to mate with them

• Supports the idea that animals imprint on any moving thing that is present during the critical period

• Supports idea of sexual imprinting occurred with the chickens attempted to mate with rubber gloves

Criticism evaluation [lorenz]

Study focuses on bird and mammalian attachment systems seem to be quite different as mammalian mothers show more emotional attachment to young than birds do

• Low external validity: may not be appropriate to try and generalise any of Lorenz’s ideas to humans

Guitton [1966] found that with experience the chickens eventually learned they preferred other chickens

• Undermines the findings: suggests the impact of imprinting on mating behaviour is not as permanent or irreversible as Lorenz believed

Research support

Harlow [1959] aimed to demonstrated that attachment is not based on the feeding bind between mother and infant [as predicted by learning theory]

Monkey was given choices of two mothers:

1. Contact comfort - cloth monkey

2. Food - wire monkey

Monkey always chose comfort over food, especially when scared. Even after getting food from the wired monkey

Monkeys explored objects better in the presence of cloth monkey rather than wire monkey

Monkeys who weren’t shown affection or could not cuddle with the cloth mother has trouble gaining weight thus leading researchers to believe that affection had a large impact on a child’s development

Monkey’s willingness to seek refuge from something offering comfort rather than food would suggest that food is not as crucial as comfort in forming a bond

Evaluation [harlow]

Humans and monkeys are very similar:

• Green [1994] states that on a biological level all mammals [including monkeys] have the same brain structure as humans just they differ in size and the number of connections

Important practical applications:

• Highlighted the importance of early experiences on long-term development and that it is vital that all of children’s needs are catered for - taking care of their physical needs alone is not enough

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Results cannot be generalised to humans:

• it is questionable as to whether findings and conclusions can be extrapolated and applied to complex human behaviours: it is potentially unlikely that cloth and wire monkeys is reflective of the emotional connections between infants and caregivers