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

Changes in elicited behavior as a function of experience with stimulation and available goal objects

“…All these characteristics indicate that experience has little influence on the proce ss and suggest that the development of filial behavior is almost totally under the control of predetermined neural events. However, Jaynes (1956Jaynes ( , 1958a reported that filial behavior improves as a function of practice and argued that young birds learn to associate stimuli with "innate responses." Jaynes (1958b) called this process "emergent discrimination. "…”

Theory and Evidence of Imprinting in Human Infants

“…Logically one may consider following in most but certainly not in all circumstances as indicating imprinting; but duration, permanent effects, and magnitude of attachment remain unreported. T h e laboratory studies do show that in precocial birds the critical period is short, several days at the most (10,16,19,20,28).…”

Selective attention in imprinting

“…The apparatus consisted of a rectangular runway, 2 ft x 8 ft, similar to that used by Jaynes (1956Jaynes ( , 1958. The inside of the runway was painted flat white and the only illumination In the room came from a 48 in.…”

“…33-35) has reviewed a number of studies which show that imprinting stimuli differ in their initial preference value. In some previous studies on stimulus control of imprinting (e.g., Jaynes, 1956Jaynes, , 1958, no control group was run to assess such stimulus preferences and, as Grey (1961) points out, the results of these studies are ambiguous. A nonimprinted control group was included in the present study to assess inherent stimulus preferences in the test.…”

“…Previous studies have shown that imprinted birds will follow the imprinted object more than a nonimprinted (test) object (Jaynes, 1956), and will show a preference for the imprinted object over a test object in a choice test (Jaynes, 1958;Guiton, 1959;Sluckin & Taylor, 1964).…”