CHILD DEVELOPMENT PEDAGOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother–infant relationship than milk, and that this “contact comfort” was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children.

Detailed explanation-2: -Harlow’s monkey experiment disproved the belief that love is only based on physical needs. The fact that the monkeys grew the most attached to the cloth mother, who satisfied no physical needs of the monkeys, showed that love and comfort were non-physical needs.

Detailed explanation-3: -Harry Frederick Harlow (1905-1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys. This has manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development.

Detailed explanation-4: -In social isolation, the monkeys showed disturbed behavior, staring blankly, circling their cages, and engaging in self-mutilation. When the isolated infants were re-introduced to the group, they were unsure of how to interact-many stayed separate from the group, and some even died after refusing to eat.

Detailed explanation-5: -Additionally, Harlow’s work also showed that infant monkeys looked for comfort in the fluffy surrogate mother, even if that surrogate mother never provided food. From this research, we can conclude that infants feel an attachment toward their caregiver. That attachment is experienced as what we know to be ‘love.