Imprinting

When I glanced at the word imprinting as a topic I was very enthusiastic. I could look into various types of publishing and/or printing and it so happens that yesterday my friend and I were shown how to make a small notebook using paper that had a watermark and finding out about those would be so interesting as well.

Unfortunately, when I started looking into what imprinting is I soon discovered that imprinting is different to an imprint. I’ll take the Chambers definition:

Imprinting: a learning process in young animals in which their social preferences become restricted to their own species or a substitute for this.

‘Imprinting according to the Wildlife Centre of Virginia 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 imprint on their parents during a critical period of development. After imprinting, they will identify with that species for life. (A bit like football teams?)

imprinting i

Imprinting for wild birds is crucial to their immediate and long-term survival. For example, precocial (word of the week) baby birds (such as ducks, geese, and turkeys) begin the process of imprinting shortly after hatching so that they follow the appropriate adult, providing them with safety.

Imprinting allows baby birds to understand appropriate behaviours and vocalizations for their species, and helps them visually identify with other members of their species so they choose appropriate mates later in life.

The timing of the imprinting stage varies from species to species, and some species of birds are more susceptible to imprinting inappropriately on human caregivers for reasons not fully understood.’

It was first reported in domestic chickens, by Sir Thomas More in 1516 as described in his treatise Utopia, 350 years earlier than by the 19th-century amateur biologist Douglas Spalding. It was rediscovered by ethologist Oskar Heinroth, and studied extensively and popularized by Konrad Lorenz working with greylag geese.

Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a "critical period" between 13 and 16 hours shortly after hatching. For example, the goslings would imprint on Lorenz himself (to be more specific, on his wading boots), and he is often depicted being followed by a gaggle of geese who had imprinted on him. Lorenz also found that the geese could imprint on inanimate objects. In one notable experiment, they followed a box placed on a model train in circles around the track.

imprinting ii

In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to ‘imprint’ on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that ‘users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems’. The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user's experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.

I love the name of this syndrome.

I can’t find an appropriate poem to fit the bill and I do like the following by one of my heroes Walt Whitman.

ONCE I pass'd through a populous city, imprinting my brain, for

         future use, with its shows, architecture, customs, and

         traditions;

Yet now, of all that city, I remember only a woman I casually met

         there, who detain'd me for love of me;

Day by day and night by night we were together,--All else has long

         been forgotten by me;

I remember, I say, only that woman who passionately clung to me;

Again we wander--we love--we separate again;

Again she holds me by the hand--I must not go!

I see her close beside me, with silent lips, sad and tremulous.

From the 1860 edition of  'Leaves of Grass '.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.