Visually inexperienced chicks exhibit spontaneous preference for biological motion patterns.
When only a small number of points of light attached to the torso and limbs of a moving organism are visible, the animation correctly conveys the animal's activity. Here we report that newly hatched chicks, reared and hatched in darkness, at their first exposure to point-light animation sequences, exhibit a spontaneous preference to approach biological motion patterns. Intriguingly, this predisposition is not specific for the motion of a hen, but extends to the pattern of motion of other vertebrates, even to that of a potential predator such as a cat. The predisposition seems to reflect the existence of a mechanism in the brain aimed at orienting the young animal towards objects that move semi-rigidly (as vertebrate animals do), thus facilitating learning, i.e., through imprinting, about their more specific features of motion.
Vallortigara
Giorgio
G
Department of Psychology, B.R.A.I.N. Centre for Neuroscience, University of Trieste, Trieste, Italy. vallorti@univ.trieste.it
Regolin
Lucia
L
Marconato
Fabio
F
D000818:Animals; D002645:Chickens; D003624:Darkness; D007173:Imprinting, Psychological; D009039:Motion Perception; D009043:Motor Activity; D014785:Vision, Ocular / Q000502:physiology