“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive” ~ Sir Walter Scott.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Behind Lorenz's Mirror

holly dependent on parents, neonates and species born relatively helpless and requiring extended periods of parental care, are referred to as 'altricial'. Alternatively, precocious young experience a slightly extended gestation period and consequently emerge at a more advanced stage of development, with the capability of feeding themselves, walking and even swimming, although they may yet require parental protection and direction to food sources.

Of course, this state of precocious independence can provide an opportunity for young to wander off from the parent long before it becomes able to fully fend for itself. That’s where imprinting comes into play, first studied by Douglas Spalding, but largely credited to Karl Lorenz as a result of his extensive empirical research into the phenomenon.

Filial imprinting, or the attachment of young to the parental model, ensures that the precocious young stay close to a model in order to learn particular behaviour. Lorenz worked with goslings and quickly assessed that, albeit constrained to some degree genetically, shortly after hatching they connected and modelled behaviour after the first moving object they were exposed to, in this case, his wading boots. Lorenz quickly discovered that reward was at the crux of this association. Reward, that is, in terms of nourishment, access to food, and the goslings' reduction in anxiety.

Nidifugous birds, or those that leave the nest shortly after hatching, imprint based upon both visual and auditory stimuli from their parents and then engage in a practice of following them around. But filial imprinting is not just restricted to that. Lorenz demonstrated that species are genetically constructed in such a way that species learn specific kinds of information and develop certain behaviourisms that are important for the survival of the species.

His book, Behind the Mirror, modelled after evolutionary biology, examines how our senses permit us to accurately assess our habitat and distinguish 'fact' as opposed to 'illusion'. Traits, according to Lorenz, are transmitted to us, and our natural sense of the security of our environment must be “spot on” otherwise we wouldn't exist to be deceived.
But if so how was it that I had been so deceived, not once, but possibly a second time? Or were my initial senses and instincts with regard to "Doug" correct?

And as I traverse the unicursal r
oute, I once again refer to Scott, who said,

“When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone” ~ Sir Walter Scott





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