Human Handlers Research Articles

Programmed life histories. A technique for psychiatric research in animals.

The methods to be presented in this paper were developed in the course of research carried out at Hamilton Station, the Behavioral Division of the Roscoe B. Jackson Laboratory. In the earlier years of this laboratory, a major area of research was the genetics of animal behavior. The behavioral characteristics of 5 breeds of dogs and a variety of hybrids reared under carefully controlled environmental conditions were analyzed from a genetic standpoint. This entailed the development of a battery of techniques for measuring dog behavior in various test situations. Subsequently, interest was directed toward the effects of particular environmental conditions and types of handling upon the behavioral development of dogs with known genetic backgrounds. For example, animals were reared under semiwild conditions, in isolation from other dogs, or with kind, as opposed to punitive, contacts with human handlers. In the course of this work, a considerable