Knowra Imprinting Imprinting Imprinting is rapid learning during a sensitive developmental period that creates lasting preferences or attachments, often toward a parent or caregiver.
Sensitive period : A developmental window when experience has an unusually strong, lasting effect on an organism. Imprinting occurs when learning is especially receptive to particular experiences.
Konrad Lorenz : An Austrian zoologist whose studies of geese helped establish modern ethology. His observations of goslings following him made filial imprinting widely known.
Ethology : The scientific study of animal behavior, especially behavior in natural settings. Imprinting became a central example in ethological research on innate and learned behavior.
Operant conditioning : Learning in which behavior changes according to its consequences, such as rewards or punishments. Unlike operant conditioning, imprinting does not depend chiefly on consequences following an action.
Filial imprinting : A young animal's early learning of, and attachment to, a parent or parent-like object. This is the classic form of imprinting described in young birds.
Greylag goose : A large gray goose native to Europe and parts of Asia, studied extensively in animal behavior. Lorenz used goslings of this species in influential imprinting observations.
Douglas Spalding : A nineteenth-century British biologist who experimentally studied instinct and early learning in birds. His observations of young birds anticipating their mothers predated Lorenz's imprinting studies.
Habituation : A decrease in response to a repeated, harmless stimulus. Habituation reduces responsiveness, whereas imprinting can establish a lasting preference.
Learning : A lasting change in knowledge or behavior produced by experience. Imprinting is a rapid, developmentally timed form of learning.
Duckling : A young duck, capable of learning to follow a parent or substitute during early development. Ducklings feature in experiments testing how early visual exposure shapes following.
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