Psychologists and ethologists use the term imprinting to describe any kind of phase-sensitive social learning. Phase-sensitive learning is learning that occurs at a particular age or life stage. Such learning is rapid and seemingly independent of any consequences the behavior may generate.
Filial Imprinting
The best known form of imprinting is filial imprinting, in which a young animal learns the characteristics of its parent and bonds with them. An extreme form of filial imprinting is exhibited mainly in birds such as goslings, ducklings and chicks. Upon coming out of their eggs, these young birds will follow and become socially bonded to the first moving object they encounter.
Imprinting is referred to as phase-sensitive learning because the time window during which imprinting is possible is quite critical. This time window may only exist for several days at the most and after that critical time imprinting will no longer occur. The results of imprinting can be quite astounding. If goslings are imprinted to a moving box or a person making a clucking noise, it will try to follow this object for the rest of its life. In fact, when the gosling reaches sexual maturity, it will make the imprinted object or person the goal of its sexual drive foregoing members of its own species.
The concept of imprinting was popularized by German ethologist Konrad Lorenz while working with Greylag geese. Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving object they encountered in what he called a “critical period” of about 11-16 hours after hatching in geese. Lorenz discovered that if Greylag geese imprinted on him (and his famous wading boots), they would follow him about and when they were adults, they would court him in preference to other Greylag geese.
As depicted in the fact-based movie drama Fly Away Home, Bill Lishman and others were able to train orphaned Canada geese to their normal migration route with the use of an ultralight aircraft. After imprinting the goslings on himself and his ultralight, Lishman was successful in leading a winter migration flight of 16 geese from Ontario, Canada to Virginia in the U.S. Of the 16 geese that flew that epic migration, 13 of them flew the same route the next year entirely on their own.
In human terms, filial imprinting refers to the process by which a baby learns who its mother and father are and begins to bond with them. It now seems apparent that in humans, the process of imprinting begins while the unborn baby is still in the womb. Even deep within its mother’s body, the developing infant learns to recognize and imprint on the voices of its parents.
Sexual Imprinting
Sexual imprinting is the process by which a young animal learns the characteristics of a desirable mate. Such imprinting is most prevalent in birds being demonstrated by over half the known orders of birds. For example, male zebra finches reared by female birds of another species, preferred mates with the appearance of the female who raised them rather than females of their own species.
Imprinting is what behaviorists categorize as phase-sensitive social learning because it occurs at a particular age or life stage. In Lorenz’s Greylag geese, filial and sexual imprinting occur almost simultaneously, but in other animals there is a much longer interval between the two imprintings.
A recent study conducted by Tamas Bereczkei of the University of Pecs, Hungary, reveals that women tend to be attracted to men who resemble their fathers while men tend to be attracted to women who resemble their mothers. Why such behavior would be true and what evolutionary significance such behavior might have is the subject of great speculation.
In the tooth and claw of the biological world, imprinting allows young animals to attach themselves to and follow their best hope for survival – their parents.
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