Abstract
To examine the effects of early visual experience on preference for biological motion (BM), newly hatched chicks were exposed to a point-light animation (a visual stimulus composed of identical light points) depicting the following features of a hen: a walking hen (a BM stimulus), a rotating hen (a non-BM stimulus), a pendulum stimulus, a random motion stimulus and a stationary pattern. Chicks were then tested in a binary choice task, choosing between walking-hen and rotating-hen stimuli. Males exhibited a preference for BM if they had been trained with any animation except the stationary pattern stimulus, suggesting that the BM preference was not learned, but induced by motion stimuli. We found a significant positive correlation between the number of approaches in training and the preference in the test, but locomotion alone did not cause preference for BM. In contrast, females exhibited a particularly strong preference for walking-hen stimuli, but only when they had been trained with it. Furthermore, females (but not males) trained with random motion showed a preference for walking hen over walking cat (a biological motion animation depicting a cat), possibly suggesting that females are choosier than males. Chicks trained with a stationary pattern and untrained controls did not show a significant preference. The induction of BM preference is discussed in terms of possible ecological background of the sex differences.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by grant-in-aid for scientific research to T. M. from the Japanese Society for Promotion of Sciences (#22570070) and from the Japanese Ministry for Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (#22120502) for Innovative Area on the “Study of the neural dynamics for understanding communication in terms of complex hetero systems.” Helpful comments on the manuscript by Dr. Masayo Soma and valuable suggestions on the statistical computations by Dr. Ai Kawamori are highly appreciated. We also wish to acknowledge constructive comments and helpful suggestions by the anonymous referees.
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Miura, M., Matsushima, T. Preference for biological motion in domestic chicks: sex-dependent effect of early visual experience. Anim Cogn 15, 871–879 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-012-0514-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-012-0514-x