ABSTRACT
Initially the term, imprinting, tended to be used mainly with reference to social attachments acquired by nidifugous birds very early in life through exposure to specific stimulus figures without the aid of extraneous rewards. Early research sought to determine under what conditions imprinting occurred in such birds, how rapidly it developed, how lasting it was, how it influenced courtship, and so on. Although quite a lot is now known about the various characteristics of imprinting in some precocial bird species, further work of this type continues. Such studies may be said to be concerned with classical imprinting. As we have seen, the term imprinting is also often used more loosely to refer to any apparently imprinting-like processes in both precocial and altricial animals, including human beings. However, it will be useful to return in the first place to imprinting in its narrow or classical sense.
