Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword: Introducing Jaap Kruijt
- Preface
- Part one Introduction
- Part two Development of perceptual and motor mechanisms
- 3 The neural basis for the acquisition and production of bird song
- 4 Sexual imprinting as a two-stage process
- 5 The influence of social interactions on the development of song and sexual preferences in birds
- 6 Perceptual mechanisms in imprinting and song learning
- 7 The development of action patterns
- Part three Development of behaviour systems
- Part four Development of cognition
- Part five Learning and development
- Author index
- Subject index
4 - Sexual imprinting as a two-stage process
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword: Introducing Jaap Kruijt
- Preface
- Part one Introduction
- Part two Development of perceptual and motor mechanisms
- 3 The neural basis for the acquisition and production of bird song
- 4 Sexual imprinting as a two-stage process
- 5 The influence of social interactions on the development of song and sexual preferences in birds
- 6 Perceptual mechanisms in imprinting and song learning
- 7 The development of action patterns
- Part three Development of behaviour systems
- Part four Development of cognition
- Part five Learning and development
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
There is now a considerable literature concerning the phenomenon known as sexual imprinting and the mechanisms underlying it (for reviews see Bateson, 1966; Immelmann and Suomi, 1981; Kruijt, 1985), However, recent findings by Immelmann, Lassek, Pröve & Bischof (1991) and by Kruijt & Meeuwissen (1991) suggest that earlier concepts of imprintinglike learning have to be revised. In this chapter I will analyse this new evidence and discuss its implications for some of the presumed characteristics of imprinting, such as the existence of a sensitive period and the stability of preferences. Further, I will consider some important questions such as stimulus selection and the reasons for stability of preferences. Many of the ideas I will present here are speculative and have little experimental backing. However, they may help us discard some of the old ideas concerning imprinting and so allow for the generation of new ones.
I will start with a brief description of the findings which prompted this chapter. Then I will propose an interpretation of these findings in terms of a two-stage process. The period in early development where information about the appearance of the parents is stored is called ‘acquisition phase’ here. Subsequently, there is a ‘consolidation process’ which takes place when the animal becomes sexually mature. In the final section of this chapter, I summarize the main features of the two-stage process and try to evaluate how the ideas presented here can be generalized to other learning paradigms.
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- Information
- Causal Mechanisms of Behavioural Development , pp. 82 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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