Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Imprinting is the acquisition in the course of the development of a higher vertebrate of the characteristics of the object upon which certain acts bear that are directed towards its fellow creatures. This acquisition is distinct from a learning process since, unlike such a process, it cannot be unlearned or can only disappear gradually. These instinctive acts may be varied in their nature: bonds with parents, offspring, companions, sexual bonds. Konrad Lorenz (1978a, b) stresses that in natural living conditions, innate schemata and schemata acquired from a fellow creature form a functional unit. Vidal (1976a, p. 34) points out that imprinting ‘determines both the reaction that consists in approaching familiar objects and simultaneously - or subsequently - the reaction which consists in the avoidance of unfamiliar objects; there is a structuring of differentiated responses towards different objects.’ Following Lorenz, we may define imprinting in terms of a series of factors: 1  Acquisition of the pattern of the object, which triggers the instinctive bonding reaction, during a short and precise critical period. 2  Impossibility of forgetting after this sensitive period; this aspect of irreversibility contrasts with the phenomenon of learning in which what has been acquired can be forgotten. 3  There may exist a different form of imprinting for different types of behaviour at different ... log in or subscribe to read full text