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Comparative Psychology: Evolution and Development of Behavior, 2nd Edition
Comparative Psychology (second edition) is a core textbook for senior undergraduate and graduate courses in Comparative Psychology, Animal Behavior, and Evolutionary Psychology. Its main goal is to introduce the student to evolutionary and developmental approaches to the study of animal behavior. The structure of the book reflects the principal areas of importance to psychology students studying animal evolution, physiological issues, learning and cognition, development, and social evolution. Throughout, this text includes many examples drawn from the study of human behavior, highlighting general and basic principles that apply broadly to the animal kingdom.
800 pages, Paperback
First published May 23, 2008
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May 22, 2011
Second edition of this book.
Wow, this one took me a long time to get through. I liked the first edition of this book pretty well but the second edition was not the book I hoped it would be. I used the first edition in my Comparative Psychology class, and while not perfect it worked pretty well. I ordered the second edition when I taught the class again, but didn't get to see a copy of the book first or I never would have done so. Papini expanded the second edition by about half, which might have been OK, except that he took out some of the stuff I liked and added tremendous detail in areas that I don't teach about in the class. The second edition is definitely not appropriate for an undergraduate course in comparative but should only be used in a graduate level course. Even so, the writing is incredibly dense. Papini never met a huge word he didn't like. Certainly, you can't write a book like this without the specialized terms of the field, but because those terms are themselves complex, it becomes even more important to simplify terminology whenever possible. Papini did not do this. I was able to make my way through it fine, but my students were completely lost and in over their heads. Simplifying the non technical vocabulary and shortening the often convoluted sentence structures would go a long way to making this work more readable for the average student.
Wow, this one took me a long time to get through. I liked the first edition of this book pretty well but the second edition was not the book I hoped it would be. I used the first edition in my Comparative Psychology class, and while not perfect it worked pretty well. I ordered the second edition when I taught the class again, but didn't get to see a copy of the book first or I never would have done so. Papini expanded the second edition by about half, which might have been OK, except that he took out some of the stuff I liked and added tremendous detail in areas that I don't teach about in the class. The second edition is definitely not appropriate for an undergraduate course in comparative but should only be used in a graduate level course. Even so, the writing is incredibly dense. Papini never met a huge word he didn't like. Certainly, you can't write a book like this without the specialized terms of the field, but because those terms are themselves complex, it becomes even more important to simplify terminology whenever possible. Papini did not do this. I was able to make my way through it fine, but my students were completely lost and in over their heads. Simplifying the non technical vocabulary and shortening the often convoluted sentence structures would go a long way to making this work more readable for the average student.
Displaying 1 of 1 review