The Study of Behavior: Organization, Methods, and Principles

Behavior studies now span a variety of sub-disciplines, including behavioral ecology, neuroscience, cognitive psychology and evolutionary developmental biology. While the fields' rapid growth has led to startling new insights into animal behavior, it has brought increasingly fragmented approaches to the subject. Integrating ideas and findings from a range of disciplines, this book provides a common framework for understanding diverse issues in behavior studies. The framework is derived from classical ethology, incorporating concepts and data from research in experimental psychology, neurophysiology and evolutionary biology. Hogan outlines the origin and development of major ideas and issues in the field, drawing on examples throughout to highlight connections across sub-disciplines. Demonstrating how results in one area can directly inform work in others, the book ultimately proposes concepts to facilitate new discussions that will open the way for improved dialog between researchers across behavior studies.

Jerry A. Hogan is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. A researcher of animal behavior for more than fifty years, his work focuses on understanding the structure, motivation and development of behavior, with tropical fish and jungle fowl as primary models. A past president of the International Society for Comparative Psychology (2002–2006), Hogan is also a co-author of Causal Mechanisms of Behavioural Development (Cambridge, 1994) and a leading contributor to Tinbergen's Legacy: Function and Mechanism in Behavioral Biology (Cambridge, 2009).