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Description - Developmental Psychobiology by George F. Michel

This text provides a coherent theoretical treatment of the field of developmental psychobiology which has arisen in recent years on the crest of advances in evolutionary biology, developmental neuroscience and dynamic systems theory. Michel and Moore, two of the field's key pioneers and researchers, integrate primary source information from research in both biological and psychological disciplines in a clear account of the frontier of biopsychological investigation and theorizing. Explicitly conceptual and historical, the first three chapters set the stage for a clear understanding of the field and its research, with particular attention to the nature-nurture question. The next three chapters each provide information about a basic subfield in biology (genetics, evolution, embryology) that is particularly relevant for developmental studies of behaviour. These are followed by extended treatments of three spheres of inquiry (behavioural embryology, cognitive neuroscience, animal behaviour) in terms of how a successful interdisciplinary approach to behavioural development might look. A final chapter comments on some of the unique aspects of development study.
From this text, students should achieve a firm grasp of some of science's most fertile questions about the relation between evolution and development, the relation between brain and cognitive development, the value of a natural history approach to animal behaviour - and what it teaches us about humans - and much more. Each chapter contains material that questions the conventional wisdom held in many subdisciplines of biology and psychology. Throughout, the text challenges students to think creatively as it thoroughly grounds them in the field's approach to such topics as behavioural-genetic analysis, the concept of innateness, molecular genetics and development, neuroembryology, behavioural embryology, maturation, cognition and ethology.

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