Developmental Psychobiology and Behavioral Ecology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxi

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2. Ecology and Experience

   • Jeffrey R. Alberts, Catherine P. Cramer

   Pages 1-39

3. The Inheritance of Niches

   • Meredith J. West, Andrew P. King, Anne A. Arberg

   Pages 41-62

4. Cause and Function in the Development of Behavior Systems

   • Jerry A. Hogan

   Pages 63-106

5. Precocity, Play, and the Ectotherm-Endotherm Transition

   • Gordon M. Burghardt

   Pages 107-148

6. The Uterus as Environment

   • William P. Smotherman, Scott R. Robinson

   Pages 149-196

7. Sexual Differentiation of Behavior in the Context of Developmental Psychobiology

   • Pauline Yahr

   Pages 197-243

8. Learning in Infancy

   • Ingrid B. Johanson, Leslie M. Terry

   Pages 245-281

9. The Neurobiology of Early Olfactory Learning

   • Robert Coopersmith, Michael Leon

   Pages 283-308

10. Opioids, Behavior, and Learning in Mammalian Development

    • Priscilla Kehoe

    Pages 309-346

11. Exploiting the Nursing Niche

    • Stephen C. Brake, Harry Shair, Myron A. Hofer

    Pages 347-388

12. Kinship and the Development of Social Preferences

    • Warren G. Holmes

    Pages 389-413

13. Development of Instinctive Behavior

    • David B. Miller

    Pages 415-444

14. Back Matter

    Pages 445-453

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The previous volume in this series (Blass, 1986) focused on the interface between developmental psychobiology and developmental neurobiology. The volume emphasized that an understanding of central nervous system development and function can be obtained only with reference to the behaviors that it manages, and it emphasized how those behaviors, in tum, shape central development. The present volume explores another natural interface of developmental psy­ chobiology; behavioral ecology. It documents the progress made by developmental psychobiologists since the mid-1970s in identifying capacities of learning and con­ ditioning in birds and mammals during the very moments following birth-indeed, during the antenatal period. These breakthroughs in a field that had previously lain dormant reflect the need to "meet the infant where it is" in order for behavior to emerge. Accordingly, studies have been conducted at nest temperature; infants have been rewarded by opportunities to huddle, suckle, or obtain milk, behaviors that are normally engaged in the nest. In addition, there was rejection of the exces­ sive deprivation, extreme handling, and traumatic manipulation studies of the 1950s and 1960s that yielded information on how animals could respond to trauma but did not reveal mechanisms of normal development. In their place has arisen a series of analyses of how naturally occurring stimuli and situations gain control over behavior and how specifiable experiences impose limitations on subsequent development. Constraints were identified on the range of interactions that remained available to developing animals as a result of particular events.

• Action
• Deprivation
• Nervous System
• behavior
• behavioral ecology
• biology
• central nervous system
• ecology
• information
• learning
• mammals
• neurobiology
• temperature
• trauma

• Department of Psychology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA

  Elliott M. Blass

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