Imprinting: the interaction of learned and innate behavior: I. Development and generalization.

Abstract

Reactions of neonate New Hampshire Red chicks to moving objects were found to be more than mere following responses, but included attention, vocalization, approaching, and following, usually appearing in that order. This matrix of responses appeared suddenly within the first few minutes of exposure to the object, and developed progressively thereafter. There were innate preferences in neonates of this species, since some objects proved better for imprinting purposes than others. The birds showed appreciable response decrements on introduction of a strange object similar in size to the object to which they were trained, the amount of generalization decrement depending, in some unknown way, upon the characteristics of the object used in training. After four days of training, chicks approached the object to which they had been trained in preference to other objects, the time taken to do so depending upon how well they had followed the object previously.