Imprinting Flashcards
Lorenz studied
imprinting in Geese
Lorenz study date
1935
what did Lorenz find?
Geese automatically ‘attach’ to the first moving thing they see after hatching and follow it everywhere
Lorenz randomly divided a clutch of goose eggs into
two groups
he left one group with
the mother
he put one group in
an incubator
incubator eggs:
the geese followed him around exactly the same way the other goslings followed their mother
Lorenz put both groups together and found that
the birds split back into their groups to find their ‘mothers’
after further experiments, Lorenz determined that imprinting was most likely
13 to 16 hours after hatching
Lorenz concluded that imprinting happened during the
critical period
imprinting is a
fast, automatic process
after the critical period was over
it was too late for the young birds to ever imprint
it’s unlikely to occur in
humans
human attachment takes
longer to develop
humans don’t automatically attach to
particular things
