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Springer New Aspects Of Human Ethology 1997 Edition by Klaus Atzwanger Karl Grammer Katrin Schäfer Alain Schmitt
Rough-and-tumble play provided one of the paradigmatic examples of the appli- tion of ethological methods back in the 1970's. Since then a modest number of - searchers have developed our knowledge of this kind of activity using a variety of methods and addressing some quite fundamental questions about age changes sex diff- ences nature and function of behaviour. In this chapter I will review work on this topic mentioning particularly the interest in comparing results from different informants and different methods of investigation. Briefly rough-and-tumble play (or R&T for short) refers to a cluster of behaviours whose core is rough but playful wrestling and tumbling on the ground; and whose general characteristic is that the behaviours seem to be agonistic but in a non-serious playful c- text. The varieties of R&T and the detailed differences between rough-and-tumble play and real fighting will be discussed later. 2. A BRIEF HISTORY OF RESEARCH ON R&T In his pioneering work on human play Groos (1901) described many kinds of rough-and-tumble play. However R&T was virtually an ignored topic from then until the late 1960's. There was of course a flowering of observational research on children in the 1920s and 1930s especially in North America; but this research had a strong practical o- entation and lacked the cross-species perspective and evolutionary orientation present in Groos' work. Table of contents : Human Ethology: Origins and Prospects of a New Discipline (I. EiblEibesfeldt). Research on Emotions and Future Developments in Human Ethology (G. Weisfeld). Play Fighting and Real Fighting: Perspectives on Their Relationship (P.K. Smith). Games Evolution Plays (K. Sigmund). Groups Gossip and the Evolution of Language (R.I.M. Dunbar). The Communication Paradox and Possible Solutions: Towards a Radical Empiricism (K. Grammer et al.). Twin Studies of Behavior: New and Old Findings (T.J. Bouchard Jr.). Hormonal Influences on Human Behavior (C.S. Carter). Copulation Masturbation and Infidelity: StateoftheArt (R.R. Baker). Abstracts of the 13th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Human Ethology (ISHE) Vienna 510 August 1996. Name Index. Subject Index.