A model of imprinting proposed by Patrick Bateson that posits experience with the imprinting stimulus as the causal factor for the end of the sensitive period. The model also holds that exposure to an imprinting object makes another one less effective, and leads individuals (chicks in this case) to prefer the one to which they have been exposed and to reject anything perceived as being different. Thus, experience of one sort excludes other forms of experience from having the same effect. The model has some similarities with the competitive exclusion principle (Gause’s rule) in community ecology: if two species occupy the same niche, one will eventually outcompete the other in harvesting more resources and reproducing more efficiently, thereby leading to the latter’s extinction.
See Community, Ecology, Imprinting, Niche (ecology), Sensitive period