Is imprinting such a special case?

Abstract

As the result of relatively brief exposure to a particular type of object early in life, many birds and mammals will form strong and exclusive attachments to that object. This is known as ‘filial imprinting’. Early experience can also have long-lasting effects on sexual preferences, but the conditions are different from those in which the first attachments are formed. Some of the characteristics of imprinting are undoubtedly because of the naive animal searching for and responding selectively to particular stimuli. But that is not all. At least two types of plastic change seem to be involved: establishing an internal representation of the familiar object and pre-emptive capturing by that representation of the systems controlling filial behaviour and, much later in development, sexual behaviour. The second plastic change is likely to generate the phenomenon of a sensitive period and gives the formation of social attachments some of its other peculiar properties. The first change is likely to be the process used in most forms of recognition. Distinguishing between the sub-processes that underlie an overall change in behaviour serves to make some overdue links between different areas of knowledge about learning which have hitherto been poorly connected.