Originally published in 1975, this volume deals with animals and human infants. The chapters reflect a mixture of issues and problems ranging from the significance of sucking responses in the newborn, the development of memory, effects of rearing conditions in monkeys, and brain damage in animals, to processes underlying abnormal development of language. While it appears the issues are diverse, there is actually a common theme. One question is posed: How and why does normal development fail to occur in some human infants? The chapters show that there are many causes of aberrations:...

Originally published in 1978, this book is a collection of chapters based on the papers read at a conference in 1976 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The title starts with an introductory essay in which a metatheoretical and philosophical approach to the problem of cognition in animals is discussed. The succeeding chapters are arranged, topically, from basic associative processes to higher mental operations. Problems derived from models of association are discussed; as well as work on attention, memory, and the processing of stimulus information; other deal with time,...

The relationship between brain and mind is one of the most baffling problems in science but potentially one of the most interesting. First published in 1985, this collection of original essays traces the development of mind in animals and human beings from its origins in the evolution of larger brains with a capacity for creating mental models of the environment. Examples are given of the way in which the brain may use this increased capacity to represent both the physical and social worlds, and the authors suggest that this type of mental activity might underly what human beings recognize...

The field of nonverbal communication is a strategic site for demonstrating the inextricable interrelationship between nature and culture in human behaviour. This book, originally published in 1997, aims to explode the misconception that "biology" is something that automatically precludes or excludes "culture". Instead, it points to the necessary grounding of our social and cultural capabilities in biological givens and elucidates how biological factors are systematically co-opted for cultural purposes.

The book presents a complex picture of human communicative ability as...

Originally published in 1977, the objective of this book was to examine the mechanisms by which the multiple factors or determinants – homeostatic deficits, hormonal influences, circadian rhythms, experiential and cognitive factors – become translated by the central nervous system into thermoregulatory, feeding, sexual, aggressive, and other behaviours. A conceptual framework has been used that reflects relevant contributions from biology, regulatory physiology, physiological psychology, and other neuroscience disciplines. The final chapter deals with difficulties in brain-behaviour...

Originally published in 1979, this book provides students with an example of the ways in which an evolutionary perspective can rephrase and clarify traditional questions and issues in psychology. The format provides the student firstly with the minimal amount of basic information in neuroanatomy, genetics and modern evolutionary theory in a form which is readily related to the remainder of the volume. The book then goes on to consider the relationships between different forms of explanation in biology, and the role of brain behaviour students in these relationships. Finally, the reader is...

Originally published in 1976, this volume reports research that will help us to understand the causes of psychogenic diseases. It deals both experimentally and theoretically with the question of symptom specificity in psychosomatic research – why some individuals respond to psychological stress with gastric disorders, others with sexual impotence, and still others with high blood pressure. As the author notes in summarizing his conclusions, "The repeated pairing of activation of a given organic system with intense nervous stress directs the pathological influence of the stressor...

Originally published in 1970, this is a survey of findings on the learning of young animals and human infants. In an attempt to discover some of the characteristic features of early learning, it examines all types of learning from conditioning and the primitive process known as ‘imprinting’, usually associated with ducklings, to the beginnings of understanding and language. The so-called ‘critical’ periods for social learning and personality development are considered at some length, and a close look is taken at research methods used in studying early learning, and at the needs and...

Originally published in 1986, in this work Professor Keehn assesses the contributions of experimental psychology and ethology to psychiatric theory and practice at the time. He discusses the status of animals in psychopathology, and describes a number of animal clinical pictures, covering both abnormal movements and convulsions, and spontaneous behavioural disorders. He also includes animal models of such psychiatric illnesses as neurosis, psychosis, drug addiction and disorders of childhood, and examines the nature of mental illness and the status of psychiatric diagnosis.

The book...

Originally published in 1985, the aim of this book was to examine the development of adaptive skills in a comparative context. Comparative explorations have evolutionary implications. Thus it is inevitable that the contributors to this volume, all of whom come to the study of development with a comparative perspective, manifest concern with the relationships between ontogeny and phylogeny. In this volume both field and laboratory approaches are presented. It is quite clear that the laboratory studies are increasingly informed by ecological considerations that derive from field excursions....