Imprinting and the development of object preference in chicks by mere repeated exposure.

Abstract

Determined whether early attachment in chicks is formed gradually or whether the chicks become attached to the 1st object they encounter at the onset of the critical period. In Exp. I, 24 1-day-old Leghorn chicks were exposed to 3 different objects for varying numbers of 30-min trials. Object-preference tests of 4 objects, 3 of which were previously exposed, showed that object attraction is a monotonic function of the amount of exposure. These results were replicated in Exp. II except that the objects were made more discriminable to eliminate a possible generalization factor. Neither primacy nor recency was found to influence object choice, showing that early attachment in precocial birds is reversible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)