The Marvelous Learning Animal: What Makes Human Behavior Unique

Arthur W. Staats

ISBN 10: 1616145978 / ISBN 13: 9781616145972

Editore: Prometheus, 2012

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Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: The Marvelous Learning Animal: What Makes Human Behavior Unique
• Editore: Prometheus
• Data di pubblicazione: 2012
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1616145978
• ISBN 13: 9781616145972
• Rilegatura: hardcover
• Condizione: Very Good

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

What makes us human? In recent decades, researchers have focused on innate tendencies and inherited traits as explanations for human behavior, especially in light of groundbreaking human genome research. The author thinks this trend is misleading. As he shows in great detail in this engaging, thought-provoking, and highly informative book, what makes our species unique is our marvelous ability to learn, which is an ability that no other primate possesses.

In his exploration of human progress, the author reveals that the immensity of human learning has not been fully understood or examined. Evolution has endowed us with extremely versatile bodies and a brain comprised of one hundred billion neurons, which makes us especially suited for a wide range of sophisticated learning. Already in childhood, human beings begin learning complex repertoires—language, sports, value systems, music, science, rules of behavior, and many other aspects of culture. These repertoires build on one another in special ways, and our brains develop in response to the learning experiences we receive from those around us and from what we read and hear and see. When humans gather in society, the cumulative effect of building learning upon learning is enormous.

The author presents a new way of understanding humanness—in the behavioral nature of the human body, in the unique human way of learning, in child development, in personality, and in abnormal behavior. With all this, and his years of basic and applied research, he develops a new theory of human evolution and a new vision of the human being. This book offers up a unified concept that not only provides new ways of understanding human behavior and solving human problems but also lays the foundations for opening new areas of science.

Informazioni sull?autore

Arthur W. Staats is professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Internationally known as an innovator, he is the inventor of the "time-out" concept that so many parents have used with their children as well as the creator of the token-reward system (token economy) to modify behavior patterns. In 2006, Child magazine recognized him as one of "20 People Who Changed Childhood." He is the author of six books, more than fifty chapters, and over eighty journal articles, among other publications.