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Human ethology
BOOK
REVIEWS
451
D. R. SUFFER: Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence (2nd edn). Brooks-Cole, Pacific Grove, Calif. (1989). xxii + 680 pp. f 16.50. This book aims to produce a current and comprehensive overview of developmental psychology reflecting the best theories, research and practical advice that developmental psychologists can provide. As in the first edition, this book is divided into five parts. Part One provides an overview of developmental psychology including a chapter on theories of human development. Part Two looks at the biological foundations of development including hereditary influences on development, prenatal development and birth, and growth of the brain, the body and motor skills. Part Three covers language, learning and cognitive development including perception, learning, language and communication skills, cognition and intelligence. Social and personal development are considered in Part Four which includes early emotional growth, personality development, sex differences and sex-role development, aggression, altruism and moral development. Part Five looks at the ecology of development, that is, the important family and environmental influences on a child’s development. This is a substantive textbook aimed at the American undergraduate; however, clinical psychologists, paediatricians, nurses, teachers and parents will appreciate this interesting and up to date text written in clear, concise language. In typical American style. each chapter is concluded with exercises and questions, important points are highlighted in boxed summaries, a running glossary is provided along with chapter summaries and the text is generously illustrated. The chatty style of this book, along with the entertaining quizzes and impressive format, makes it easy reading and a useful introduction to developmental psychology. MICHELLENEW
I.
EIBL-EIBESFELDT:Human Ethology.
Aldine de Gruyter, New York (1989). xvi + 848 pp. DM 148,--.
The animal and instinctual origins of behaviour have too often been ignored by psychologists raised within the Watson/Hull/Skinner learning theory tradition of American psychology. Now the approach to understanding behaviour that stems from Darwin, Lorenz, Tinbergen and the sociobiologists is coming back into its own and this textbook of Eibl-Eibesfeldt (translated from German) is an excellent overview of this line of investigation. Lest the material should seem remote from the practice of clinical psychology, let me give one example. Learning theory cannot explain why sexual arousal in males depends upon a sense of dominance while arousal in females is enhanced by fear. Studies of courtship in non-human animals, however, show that males typically have to overcome female threat and achieve dominance before copulation can occur-a ritual that ensures the progressive selection of vigor in both sexes. Much time has been wasted in sex therapy circles with the presumption that female responsiveness can be enhanced by fear-reduction procedures (e.g. anxiolytic drugs), a hypothesis which has repeatedly been disconfirmed. I commend the area of human ethology (and this book in particular) to all psychologists, especially those most steeped in Skinnerian and social learning theory philosophies.
C. R. CHAPMANand J. D. L0EsER(Eds): Issues in Pain Measurement (Vol. 12 in Advances in Pain Research and Therapy Series). Raven Press, New York (1989). xviii + 570 pp. S137.50. This book is the latest addition to a distinguished series. It provides a thorough and provocative review of pain measurement: philosophy, animal laboratory, human laboratory, self report, behaviour, surveys. The central paradox of pain measurement is that there is far more agreement on how to scale or score pain than on its definition. An anonymous discussant notes this on page 334. Many chapters grapple with defining pain before plunging on to describe what they measured or what other people should be measuring. Graceley acknowledges that “it only hurts when a human says it hurts” (p. 221) at the start of his rigorous discussion of human pain psychophysics. Clark and his coworkers have produced a clarion call of a chapter on multidimensional scaling (MDS). They describe the INDSCAL procedure which uses matrices of judged proximities between pairs of words which describe pain,to generate distances between stimuli as if on a map. Already MDS has managed to distill dimensions of coping strategies and pain behaviours, for example. One professed hope is that a patient’s therapeutic regime could be more closely tailored to specific requirements, once precise location in the INDSCAL global pain space has been ascertained. A number of chapters report clinical work with humans or animals. The methodological issues are clearly different. For example, Klide describing his veterinary treatments notes that “since the patients were horses, it is unlikely that their responses to acupuncture were due to the placebo effect” (p. 203). There is an excellent chapter by Naliboff and Cohen on psychophysical laboratory methods applied to clinical pain patients, and a short heartfelt piece by Mackie discussing the clinician’s perspectives. This is a book of ideas rather than experiments (at a rough count only 13 of the 45 chapters present explicit data), an attempt to map out the future of pain measurement. It does this pretty well and if it is perhaps more concerned with the forest than with the structure of the leaves, then it is even more essential reading for that. DA~X
LANGDON
REVIEWS
451
D. R. SUFFER: Developmental Psychology: Childhood and Adolescence (2nd edn). Brooks-Cole, Pacific Grove, Calif. (1989). xxii + 680 pp. f 16.50. This book aims to produce a current and comprehensive overview of developmental psychology reflecting the best theories, research and practical advice that developmental psychologists can provide. As in the first edition, this book is divided into five parts. Part One provides an overview of developmental psychology including a chapter on theories of human development. Part Two looks at the biological foundations of development including hereditary influences on development, prenatal development and birth, and growth of the brain, the body and motor skills. Part Three covers language, learning and cognitive development including perception, learning, language and communication skills, cognition and intelligence. Social and personal development are considered in Part Four which includes early emotional growth, personality development, sex differences and sex-role development, aggression, altruism and moral development. Part Five looks at the ecology of development, that is, the important family and environmental influences on a child’s development. This is a substantive textbook aimed at the American undergraduate; however, clinical psychologists, paediatricians, nurses, teachers and parents will appreciate this interesting and up to date text written in clear, concise language. In typical American style. each chapter is concluded with exercises and questions, important points are highlighted in boxed summaries, a running glossary is provided along with chapter summaries and the text is generously illustrated. The chatty style of this book, along with the entertaining quizzes and impressive format, makes it easy reading and a useful introduction to developmental psychology. MICHELLENEW
I.
EIBL-EIBESFELDT:Human Ethology.
Aldine de Gruyter, New York (1989). xvi + 848 pp. DM 148,--.
The animal and instinctual origins of behaviour have too often been ignored by psychologists raised within the Watson/Hull/Skinner learning theory tradition of American psychology. Now the approach to understanding behaviour that stems from Darwin, Lorenz, Tinbergen and the sociobiologists is coming back into its own and this textbook of Eibl-Eibesfeldt (translated from German) is an excellent overview of this line of investigation. Lest the material should seem remote from the practice of clinical psychology, let me give one example. Learning theory cannot explain why sexual arousal in males depends upon a sense of dominance while arousal in females is enhanced by fear. Studies of courtship in non-human animals, however, show that males typically have to overcome female threat and achieve dominance before copulation can occur-a ritual that ensures the progressive selection of vigor in both sexes. Much time has been wasted in sex therapy circles with the presumption that female responsiveness can be enhanced by fear-reduction procedures (e.g. anxiolytic drugs), a hypothesis which has repeatedly been disconfirmed. I commend the area of human ethology (and this book in particular) to all psychologists, especially those most steeped in Skinnerian and social learning theory philosophies.
C. R. CHAPMANand J. D. L0EsER(Eds): Issues in Pain Measurement (Vol. 12 in Advances in Pain Research and Therapy Series). Raven Press, New York (1989). xviii + 570 pp. S137.50. This book is the latest addition to a distinguished series. It provides a thorough and provocative review of pain measurement: philosophy, animal laboratory, human laboratory, self report, behaviour, surveys. The central paradox of pain measurement is that there is far more agreement on how to scale or score pain than on its definition. An anonymous discussant notes this on page 334. Many chapters grapple with defining pain before plunging on to describe what they measured or what other people should be measuring. Graceley acknowledges that “it only hurts when a human says it hurts” (p. 221) at the start of his rigorous discussion of human pain psychophysics. Clark and his coworkers have produced a clarion call of a chapter on multidimensional scaling (MDS). They describe the INDSCAL procedure which uses matrices of judged proximities between pairs of words which describe pain,to generate distances between stimuli as if on a map. Already MDS has managed to distill dimensions of coping strategies and pain behaviours, for example. One professed hope is that a patient’s therapeutic regime could be more closely tailored to specific requirements, once precise location in the INDSCAL global pain space has been ascertained. A number of chapters report clinical work with humans or animals. The methodological issues are clearly different. For example, Klide describing his veterinary treatments notes that “since the patients were horses, it is unlikely that their responses to acupuncture were due to the placebo effect” (p. 203). There is an excellent chapter by Naliboff and Cohen on psychophysical laboratory methods applied to clinical pain patients, and a short heartfelt piece by Mackie discussing the clinician’s perspectives. This is a book of ideas rather than experiments (at a rough count only 13 of the 45 chapters present explicit data), an attempt to map out the future of pain measurement. It does this pretty well and if it is perhaps more concerned with the forest than with the structure of the leaves, then it is even more essential reading for that. DA~X
LANGDON