AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -imprinting, in psychobiology, a form of learning in which a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object with which it has visual, auditory, or tactile experience and thereafter follows that object.

Detailed explanation-2: -Imprinting is a form of rapid, supposedly irreversible learning that results from exposure to an object during a specific period (a critical or sensitive period) during early life and produces a preference for the imprinted object.

Detailed explanation-3: -The innate part of the behavior is the instinct to bond or imprint the first object on the animal’s brain. The learned part of the behavior comes in regarding what the newborn imprints. It learns what to consider its mother through observation and experience of the world around it.

Detailed explanation-4: -Imprinting is a form of learning in which an animal gains its sense of species identification. Birds do not automatically know what they are when they hatch – they visually imprint on their parents during a critical period of development. After imprinting, they will identify with that species for life.

Detailed explanation-5: -Imprinting typically occurs within a perinatal sensitive period, which typically lasts for several days but which is very variable in duration (Bateson, 1966; Sluckin, 1972; Bolhuis, 1991).