Preference for biological motion in domestic chicks: sex-dependent effect of early visual experience

Abstract

To examine the effects of early visual experience on preference for biological motion, newly-hatched chicks were exposed to a point-light animation (a visual stimulus composed of identical light-points) depicting features of a hen; a walking hen (a biological motion stimulus), a rotating hen (a non-biological motion 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 biological motion if they had been trained with any animation except the stationary pattern stimulus, suggesting that the biological motion 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 to biological motion. 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 biological motion preference is discussed in terms of possible ecological background of the sex differences.3

Biological motion stimuli are attractive to medaka fish

“…These results indicate that biological motion stimuli have a large effect on the induction of shoaling behaviour and are highly attractive to medaka. As with human newborns (Simion et al 2008) and infants (Fox and McDaniel 1982), common marmosets (Brown et al 2010), and chicks (Vallortigara et al 2005; Vallortigara and Regolin 2006; Miura and Matsushima 2012), medaka attended to biological motion patterns to a great extent.…”

“…Since Johansson’s pioneering work, the perceptual cues of biological motion and the neural mechanisms mediating the perception of biological motion have been investigated extensively in humans (for reviews, see Giese and Poggio 2003; Troje 2008). In recent years, the ability to perceive biological motion has been investigated in non-human animals, including chimpanzees (Tomonaga 2001), baboons (Parron et al 2007), rhesus monkeys (Oram and Perrett 1994; Vangeneugden et al 2010; Jastorff et al 2012), common marmosets (Brown et al 2010), bottlenosed dolphins (Herman et al 1990), cats (Blake 1993), rats (MacKinnon et al 2010; Foley et al 2012), pigeons (Omori 1997; Dittrich et al 1998; Troje and Aust 2013), and chicks (Regolin et al 2000; Vallortigara et al 2005; Vallortigara and Regolin 2006; Miura and Matsushima 2012). Unfortunately, it has not been studied whether fish can perceive biological motion and what effects biological motion has on fish behaviours.…”

The human newborn’s umwelt: Unexplored pathways and perspectives

“…Newborns of several animal species show a preference for biological motion (monkeys: J. Brown, Kaplan, Rogers, & Vallortigara, 2010;Miura & Matsushima, 2012;fish: Nakayasu & Watanabe, 2014;chicks: Rugani, Rosa Salva, Regolin, & Vallortigara, 2015;Simion et al, 2008;Vallortigara, Regolin, & Marconato, 2005) and animated objects (Rosa Salva, Mayer, & Vallortigara, 2015;Vallortigara, 2012) as do human newborns (Bardi, Regolin, & Simion, 2011;Di Giorgio, Lunghi, Simion, & Vallortigara, 2016;Woodward, Phillips, & Spelke, 1993). While this model emphasizes evolutionary history and its impact on human infants' early competencies, the other predominant model, the developmental psychobiological systems view, also called experiential canalization, with its bidirectional influences (Gottlieb, 1991), emphasizes the permanent reciprocal coactions of environmental and species-specific characteristics.…”

Sex and gender affect the social brain: Beyond simplicity

“…In line with popular beliefs about female superiority in visual social cognition, there are some indications for sex impact on BM processing in common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ): females but not males exhibit curiosity toward point‐light BM (Brown et al, ). Newly hatched female chicks demonstrate a stronger preference for point‐light BM of a walking hen (even over a walking cat) compared with their male peers (Miura and Matsushima, ). However, alterations in point‐light BM processing with age appear to be unaffected by observers' gender (Billino et al, ).…”