Why this reading
Harlow's address reports surrogate-mother experiments that separated feeding from contact comfort. In the initial dual-surrogate comparison, four infant rhesus monkeys received milk from the cloth surrogate and four from the wire surrogate; both groups preferred contact with cloth. Read the paper for the design of that comparison and the limits of inferring human attachment from it. It remains valuable as optional reading on attachment history and animal experimentation.
Before you read
Identify the explanation being tested: that attachment to a caregiver follows from feeding. Read the address as an experimental argument about infant rhesus monkeys before judging its implications for human attachment. Its rhetorical style is part of the historical document, not a substitute for its methods.
Read for
- The design: what the two surrogates share, what distinguishes them, and why the separation of feeding from contact is the whole point.
- The measures. Time spent with each surrogate, behaviour under threat, and use of the surrogate as a base for exploration are different kinds of evidence; notice which is most persuasive.
- The inference from monkeys to human infants. Where does Harlow make it explicitly, and on what grounds?
- What the experiment does not show. Contact comfort matters; does it follow that feeding does not, or that the cloth mother is an adequate mother?
Consider afterwards
- What features of a human infant's situation are absent for a monkey with a cloth surrogate, and how might they change the conclusion?
- The experiment tests a theory of attachment by removing the mother. What does it assume about what a "mother" provides, and is that assumption itself testable?
Editorial context
The original address describes both feeding conditions, an essential part of its experimental logic. Preference for cloth in this setting does not establish that feeding is irrelevant to human attachment or that a surrogate provides an adequate developmental environment. Maternal separation and the animals' welfare belong in the evaluation of the study itself. Distinguish these procedures from later isolation studies rather than treating all of Harlow's research as one experiment.