Prenatal visual experience alters postnatal sensory dominance hierarchy in bobwhite quail chicks

Abstract Work with a variety of precocial animal infants has demonstrated a hierarchy in the functional priority of the auditory and visual systems in the period following birth or hatching with infants initially utilizing auditory rather than visual cues to direct their early perceptual and social preferences. This experiment utilized bobwhite quail embryos and hatchlings to examine whether this pattern of early sensory dominance is influenced by the nature of prenatal sensory experience. Results revealed that bobwhite quail chicks that received unusually early (prenatal) visual experience demonstrate an altered pattern of postnatal sensory dominance but only under specific conditions. Whereas these chicks continued to prefer maternal auditory cues over visual cues when the maternal visual cues provided were motionless, chicks that received prenatal visual experience preferred maternal visual cues over auditory cues by 96 hours of postnatal age when the visual cues provided were kinetic. These results emphasize the importance of considering both extra- and intraorganismic variables when characterizing the nature of early perceptual organization.

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