New Aspects of Human Ethology

ISBN-13: 9781475785791 / Angielski / Miękka / 2013 / 239 str.

Klaus Atzwanger; Karl Grammer; Katrin Schafer

Opis

Rough-and-tumble play provided one of the paradigmatic examples of the appli- tion of ethological methods, back in the 1970's. Since then, a modest number of - searchers have developed our knowledge of this kind of activity, using a variety of methods, and addressing some quite fundamental questions about age changes, sex diff- ences, nature and function of behaviour. In this chapter I will review work on this topic, mentioning particularly the interest in comparing results from different informants and different methods of investigation. Briefly, rough-and-tumble play (or R&T for short) refers to a cluster of behaviours whose core is rough but playful wrestling and tumbling on the ground; and whose general characteristic is that the behaviours seem to be agonistic but in a non-serious, playful c- text. The varieties of R&T, and the detailed differences between rough-and-tumble play and real fighting, will be discussed later. 2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON R&T In his pioneering work on human play, Groos (1901) described many kinds of rough-and-tumble play. However, R&T was virtually an ignored topic from then until the late 1960's. There was, of course, a flowering of observational research on children in the 1920s and 1930s, especially in North America; but this research had a strong practical o- entation, and lacked the cross-species perspective and evolutionary orientation present in Groos' work.

Spis treści

Human Ethology: Origins and Prospects of a New Discipline (I. EiblEibesfeldt). Research on Emotions and Future Developments in Human Ethology (G. Weisfeld). Play Fighting and Real Fighting: Perspectives on Their Relationship (P.K. Smith). Games Evolution Plays (K. Sigmund). Groups, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (R.I.M. Dunbar). The Communication Paradox and Possible Solutions: Towards a Radical Empiricism (K. Grammer et al.). Twin Studies of Behavior: New and Old Findings (T.J. Bouchard, Jr.). Hormonal Influences on Human Behavior (C.S. Carter). Copulation, Masturbation, and Infidelity: StateoftheArt (R.R. Baker). Abstracts of the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE), Vienna 510 August, 1996. Name Index. Subject Index.

O autorze

Karl Grammer, geboren 1950, Studium der Zoologie, Anthropologie und Physik an der Universität München, ab 1978 an der Forschungsstelle Humanethologie der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1982 Promotion, 1985 wissenschaftlicher Assistent, seit 1991 Leiter des Ludwig-Boltzmann-Instituts für Stadtethologie in Wien.