ABSTRACT

First published in 1988. During the past decade there has been a marked increase in the number of North American and European laboratories engaged in the study of social learning. As a consequence, evidence is rapidly accumulating that in animals, as in humans, social interaction plays an important role in facilitating development of adaptive patterns of behavior. Experimenters are isolated both by the phenomena they study and by the species with which they work. The process of creating a coherent field out of the diversity of current social learning research is likely to be both long and difficult. It the authors’ hope, that the present volume may prove a useful first step in bringing order to a diverse field.