Writing something by reading one - Article Example

Summary and Conclusion Harry Harlow, an American psychologist, was a renowned researcher for his experiments onrhesus monkeys to test dependency needs, social isolation, and maternal separation. Harlow’s research was geared towards demonstrating the importance of companionship and caregiving in cognitive and social development in young ones. Harlow’s study was controversial as it included rearing young or infant monkeys in isolated cage chambers until they reached the age of two years. After he released the baby monkeys from the chambers, they would appear to be severely disturbed mentally.

Some other scholars view his researches as the main contributing factor towards the formation of the famous animal liberation movement. On his surrogate mothers experiments, Harlow, his students, and other associates started learning on how give physical care to the infant needs. From their studies, they observed that the nursery-reared infants had developed strange behaviors that were absent from their counterparts reared by their mother peers. In a better definition than that, the infants were psychologically strange because they had definite social deficits, clung to their mother diapers, and were reclusive.

Infants that, for example, grew with the diaper mother only and with no playmates showed signs of aggressiveness and fear to the researchers and other baby monkeys. After noticing the infants attachment to cloths of their diapers coupled with psychological changes that resulted from the absence and lack of a natural mother, Harlow decided to go deeper in investigating the infant-mother bond. He developed inanimate surrogate mothers from wire and wood for the rhesus infants. Each infant was assigned to a mother with a unique mother and they ended up preferring and ignoring others.

He then sought to study whether they had a preference for cloth covered mothers or bare wire mothers. He created a cloth mother and all the infants their wire mothers for the new cloth mothers. He concluded mother-infant relationship depends on more than just the milk and food. Physical contact is important as it provides interaction that is essential in developing love in the relationship. Evaluation and ImprovementHarlow’s famous experiments on maternal deprivation in monkeys were breakthroughs in the evolving studies of attachment and love.

For researchers like Harlow, it is crucial if developmental theories are proved and verified in controlled laboratory conditions, and that is when they should qualify to be referred to as scientific. His conclusions and thoughts were justified by the results of the experiments that gave him the upper hand in criticizing psychoanalysts. He found the basis for countering arguments that his work led to faulty memories by assuming the adult disorders originated from the childhood experiences. Even though factors such as breastfeeding should also be held accountable, Harlow confirmed the much emphasis that has been put on the mother-infant relationship at the start of life.

Together with his peers, Rene Spitz, and Anna Freud, his experiments added scientific prove and power to the argument in favor of parenthood rather than institutional childcare. Although his experiments have been criticized for being unethical, his experiments will forever be studied for their contribution to understanding the impacts of depriving infants of maternal care. The experiment was done perfectly and I would hardly change anything when given a chance. I would, however, have an addition in the surrogate mothers experiment.

I would add a mother producing some sounds and observe the infant’s response to the “talking” mother. Perhaps the response would be better than the one towards the cloth mother.