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Re: Baby elephants

Posted by alexandra_k on August 19, 2005, at 0:20:17

In reply to Re: Terrible Session » cricket, posted by alexandra_k on August 18, 2005, at 16:53:51

I just remembered...
Elephants exhibit learned helplessness too.
When they are little we tie a rope round its leg and hammer a peg into the ground.
The baby elephant struggles but is helpless to free itself from the peg.
And eventually...
The baby elephant grows into a big elephant
That could dispose of the peg effortlessly
But it does not.

It has learned that it is helpless against the peg.

Not sure what all this has to do about attachment though...

I think there may be something around if someone doesn't form attachment by age 7 then they cannot...
But we don't know that because we don't know of people who have been so isolated
And its unethical to run that particular experiment...
7 is supposed to be the magical age for language acquisition too.
They found a girl who had been kept chained to her bed for most of her life
Her parents didn't really talk to her
They found her when she was 14.
The academics got themselves all excited:
Is language acquisition possible now???
They fought for custody...
Universities fought for custody...
They called her 'genie' as in 'I dream of genie'
It came out in the court case that her parents noticed that she was mentally handicapped.
That is why they chained her to her bed
The academics realised that genie would not show them whether 7 was the magical age for language acquisition or not...
They lost interest...
She was placed in an institution.

What a f*cked up world this is indeed.

Harlow studied the nature of love
He studied the nature of love by depriving monkeys of their peers and / or mothers
Would a monkey form an attachment to a wire surrogate?
Would a monkey form an attachment to a surrogate that physically hurt the monkey when it came in close proximity?
Yes
Yes
The 'mother' would hurt and still the infant would return
Over
And over
And over again

(trigger for the link)

http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~philosophy/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ProfEthicsS05Sections/BerkichReadingsSinger

This is one f*cked up world...

 

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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20050813/msgs/543754.html