First published in 1986. This monograph is based on a conference sponsored by the Human Learning and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH. The meeting that was held at the Xerox Center in Leesburg, Virginia, in August 1983, brought together a group of leading researchers for the purpose of providing an overview of the emerging field of developmental behavioral pharmacology. More specifically, as is evidenced by the chapters in this volume, the intent was to put the field into historical perspective, render a working definition, and outline strategies and tactics for conducting behavioral pharmacological research in the developing organism.

International Review of Research in Mental Retardation

Behavioral toxicology is a young discipline in the United States; so young, in fact, that this is one of its first books. Behavioral questions are bound to play a major role in future scientific work and governmental decisions involving the health effects of environmental contaminants and other chemicals. This role springs from two key problems that face scientists and public agencies required to set acceptable exposure standards or to determine criteria for the toxicity of therapeutic chemicals: How do you evaluate effects that may show up only as subtle functional disturbances? And how do you de tect toxic effects early enough so that they may still be reversible, before they produce major damage? The contributions in this book come from a collection of scientists whose interests span a wide variety of problem areas. The focus is largely on me thodological issues because they represent the most immediate concern of the discipline. We expect that this collection of papers will represent a useful source book for behavioral toxicology for some time. For the past few years, the University of Rochester's Department of Radiation Biology and Biophysics has sponsored a series of international conferences on chemical toxicity, partly as a response to concern over the con sequences to health of the rich chemical soup in which we live. This book is based upon presentations made to the fifth of the series. Held in June, 1972, it was the first formal meeting devoted to behavioral toxicology in this country.

Prenatal Determinants of Behavior describes the methods of research on events in the maternal environment during gestation affecting the postnatal behavior of offspring by altering the intra-uterine environment of the fetus. This book is composed of 11 chapters that focus on methods of investigation rather than on substantive findings in the belief that progress in explaining behavior depends on researchers recognizing in the way in which they design experiments that behavior is determined by a multitude of complexly interacting events. After a brief introduction to the aspects of pregnancy, this book goes on examining the role of maternal influences and environmental factors, such as irradiation, drugs, hormone, and nutrition, on postnatal offspring behavior. The discussion then shifts to methods of altering the emotional state of a mother that affect her physiological condition indirectly. Other chapters survey the principles and experimentation of the genotype-environment interaction and its influence of offspring behavior. The last chapters deal with human studies concerning the influence of a variety of prenatal variable on the growth, health, and behavior of human offspring, including smoking, maternal environment, nutrition, diseases, X-rays, drugs, and stress. This book will be of great value to psychiatrists and medical professionals and students.

This book was developed in response to a need in behavioral teratology for a comprehen sive set of reviews of the field's many topics brought together in a single source. This volume represents the first effort to synthesize and integrate research in the field since 1969 when Justin Joffe wrote Prenatal Determinants of Behaviour. Joffe's book became a standard reference for many years, particularly for the experimental design of animal investigations. It has become increasingly evident, however, that some aspects of design once considered inviolate have changed and become part of a more flexible approach. In current research the emphasis is on a set of prioritized, but focused, experimental ques tions rather than on designs which factor all possible variables into every experiment. Also, new design considerations have arisen over the last 15 years, not appreciated when Joffe wrote. Moreover, the sheer volume of new experimental evidence generated since 1969 has increased the content of the field several fold. These considerations made a new review and critical appraisal of the field compelling. The book is divided into four major sections. Part I contains four chapters. These chapters provide discussions of the general principles of behavioral teratogenesis, and information on the historical, governmental, and methodological contexts in which the field operates. The purpose of these chapters is to provide the framework within which the review chapters in the remainder of the book may best be understood.