N.N. Ladygina-Kohts earned her degree in comparative psychology at Moscow University in 1917, then became the first curator of the Darwin Museum in Moscow. Her pioneering work with the chimpanzee, Joni, was reported throughout the continent during her lifetime, earning her a series of honors in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child, her diary comparing Joni’s development with that of her son, Rudy, had never been translated completely. This volume presents the first, complete English translation with 120 photographs, an introduction by Allen and Beatrix Gardner of the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Nevada and an Afterword by Lisa A. Parr, Signe Preuschoft, and Frans B. M. de Waal of the Living Links Center.
"A unique descriptive achievement...a healthy provocation to the modern reader's habitual psychological pigeon-holing...Today's students and other thoughtful readers should find in it an intriguing challenge: Much might be gained by convincingly filling the gap between the richness of the objective descriptions laid so generously before them and the justification of legitimate bases for ascribing particular states of emotion to these behaviors." -- Andrew Whiten, Science "Ladygina-Kohts (1890-1963) did her research in relative isolation in Stalinist Moscow while American behaviorists were relegating the human mind to a mechanical device. She compared her observations of an infant chimpanzee in her laboratory, 1913-16, with those of her own son, 1925-29. Her book was published by the Museum Darwinianum, Moscow, as volume three of its series of scientific memoirs. Waal (psychology, Yerkes' Living Links Center, Emory U.) includes all original photographs and line illustrations, and assembles commentary by other contemporary primatologists."--SciTech Book News "Part of the charm of the book is that it allows one to lean over the author's shoulder and share her sense of discovery as a multitude of similarities between the childhood preoccupations of ape and child were discovered for the first time by her and as the equally profound mental differences began to emerge . . .But the pride of place goes to Khots's analysis of emotions and their expression----a topic that was nearly taboo during behaviorism's dominance and is still being only haltingly addressed by animal researchers today. . . Her work is a model of good science insofar as her first priority was to describe and document. Her text is supplemented by a photographic gallery that, amazingly, remains unequaled in our image-conscious times . . . A final major value of Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child is that today's students and other thoughtful readers should find it an intriguing challenge."--Science "A unique descriptive achievement...a healthy provocation to the modern reader's habitual psychological pigeon-holing...Today's students and other thoughtful readers should find in it an intriguing challenge: Much might be gained by convincingly filling the gap between the richness of the objective descriptions laid so generously before them and the justification of legitimate bases for ascribing particular states of emotion to these behaviors." -- Andrew Whiten, Science "Ladygina-Kohts (1890-1963) did her research in relative isolation in Stalinist Moscow while American behaviorists were relegating the human mind to a mechanical device. She compared her observations of an infant chimpanzee in her laboratory, 1913-16, with those of her own son, 1925-29. Her book was published by the Museum Darwinianum, Moscow, as volume three of its series of scientific memoirs. Waal (psychology, Yerkes' Living Links Center, Emory U.) includes all original photographs and line illustrations, and assembles commentary by other contemporary primatologists."--SciTech Book News "Part of the charm of the book is that it allows one to lean over the author's shoulder and share her sense of discovery as a multitude of similarities between the childhood preoccupations of ape and child were discovered for the first time by her and as the equally profound mental differences began to emerge . . .But the pride of place goes to Khots's analysis of emotions and their expression----a topic that was nearly taboo during behaviorism's dominance and is still being only haltingly addressed by animal researchers today. . . Her work is a model of good science insofar as her first priority was to describe and document. Her text is supplemented by a photographic gallery that, amazingly, remains unequaled in our image-conscious times . . . A final major value of Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child is that today's students and other thoughtful readers should find it an intriguing challenge."--Science
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