Perceptual consequences of early social experience in precocial birds

This article reviews recent work with precocial avian hatchlings demonstrating the important contribution that social experience with conspecifics can make to the development of species-typical perceptual preferences. In particular, experiments on the role of sibling social interaction in the development of early auditory and visually directed maternal preferences are surveyed. Results reveal that young hatchlings denied the opportunity for direct social experience with siblings consistently display auditory and visual preferences different from those shown by hatchlings allowed ongoing experience with their broodmates during the period immediately following hatching. Taken together, the studies reviewed here demonstrate that the perceptual preferences underlying the process of filial imprinting, long thought to be simply ‘innate’ or ‘instinctive’, are sensitive to an array of social factors present in the young bird's posthatching environment. The findings also provide support for the view that the minimum unit for the developmental analysis of species-typical behavior must be the developmental system, comprised of both the developing organism and its specific stimulative environment.