Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Imprinting

A type of learning characteristic of fowls that occurs only during a critical period of development soon after birth.

Imprinting is the process that prompts ducklings to form an attachment to their mothers—or whatever other moving object that appears—within the first two days of life. Ethologists, scientists who study the behavior of animals in their natural environment, noted the process of imprinting as they observed newly hatched ducklings. They discovered that if a duckling were introduced to another moving object, alive or not, during a critical period after birth, the duckling would follow that...