Imprinting An amazing and very curious example of genetic and environmental influences on animal behavior is provided by "imprinting". It is a phenomenon exhibited by many species. It can be readily seen with birds, such as ducklings and chicks. Upon coming out of their eggs, they will follow and become attached (socially bonded) to the first moving object they encounter (which usually, but not necessarily, is the mother. The first scientific studies of this phenomenon were carried out by Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz, (1903 - 1989), who, incidently, received a Nobel prize for his work, was one of the founders of ethology (the study of animal behavior). He discovered that if greylag geese were reared by him from hatching, they would treat him like a parental bird. The goslings followed Lorenz about and when they were adults they courted him in preference to other greylag geese. He first called the phenomenon "stamping in" in German which has been translated to English as "imprinting". The reason for the "stamping in" name is because Lorenz thought that the sensory object met by the newborn bird is somehow stamped immediately and irreversibly onto its nervous system. We also know that imprinting occurs in the human species. The following text is taken directly from the Intelligent Design of Personality; "For decades now, there has been experimental evidence that “the human infant is born with a preference for the normal human face”, [Jirari], 1970]. Jirari found that when 36 newborns only 24 hours old were shown normal human faces verses scrambled faces, the normal faces elicited markedly more visual following. Similar results were also true for infants that were only a few hours old as well. Additional research [Hess and Hess, 1969] also indicates that ducklings have an innate preference for the characteristics of their species-specific mother. In a typical experiment demonstrating imprinting, a moving object is presented to newly hatched duckling, 12-24 hours old. The duckling responds by imprinting on the target object - be it their natural mother or not. The ducklings, approaching the imprinted object, follow that object, and then snuggle up to that object indicating the completion of the imprinting sequence. Further evidence of imprinting is derived from the fact that when a duckling is taken away from the imprinted target object, which it believes to be its mother, it will emit distress calls and, if returned to the imprinted object, will emit sounds denoting contentment and satisfaction. Further, a few days later, the hatchling will actively avoid other strange objects, [Bowlby 1969-82]. LANGUAGE IMPRINTING - Language Imprinting has more recently been discovered to be a part of the same imprint learning phenomenon. Marler, [1975], concludes that “normal children come equipped with a special predisposition for apprehending the syntax of the language of the species to which the organism belongs”. In other words, “children are genetically prepared, pretuned, not only to the range of human speech sounds, as the child has the ability to discriminate phonemes virtually at birth, but also to respond preferentially to the sounds, voices, and structures of the actual human language”. Lenneberg indicates that, “for any child, any language is equally easily learned provided that the learning takes place during the sensitive (imprinting) period. There is a heightened interest in language for children during the first two years and they can learn the language of their culture on their own. The observable facts are the absence of any need for teaching of language as well as the relative ineffectiveness of programmed training upon the rate of language acquisition”. Lenneberg, further, states that “the unfolding of language is a process of actualization in which the latent structure is transformed into a realized structure” The Biological Foundation of Language conference suggests that, “there are many reasons to believe that the language learning processes are deeply rooted species specific, innate properties of man’s biological nature”. Teuber, speaking as a neurologist, and trying to sum up the conference discussions of the brain mechanism underlying speech and language said: “I would like to venture a guess… It may well turn out that certain universal features of human language such as the patterning of phonemes, in terms of distinctive features, are innate”. These examples of imprinting and many more are discussed in the text, Intelligent Design of Personality:How Mother Nature Controls and Shapes Your Personality. These topics are discussed to bring the attention of parents and others the profound influence imprinting has on the development of a child's personality. Good initial imprinting means a greater ability in the offspring to listen and learn from its parental models, and later, from its teachers at school. The Intelligent Design of Personality:How Mother Nature Controls and Shapes Your Personality speaks for children without a voice, that is, for those children from the age of 2 minutes to two years old. This voice, from Mother Nature's perspective, is vital because more attention has to be paid to the moments,hours and days after birth because it is during this early time period that many critical or sensitive imprinting sequences take place and lay the foundation for the child's personality and learning potential for life.