0003-3472 2012 The Association for the Study of A http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.10.031 The scientific study of frogs and toads as important systems in behavioural ecology traces its roots to an influential review published in this journal 36 years ago (Wells 1977a, ‘The social behaviour of anuran amphibians’, Animal Behaviour, 25, 666e693). In just 28 pages, Wells summarized the stat...

The past few decades have produced important advances in our understanding of how the brain regulates emotion and cognition. In comparison, research on the neuroscience of human social behaviour is a relatively neglected topic in spite of the importance of social interactions for mental health. In this editorial, I give examples of some of the experimental approaches that have been used to stud...

OBJECTIVE To identify whether obstetric and perinatal factors are independent predictors of child behaviour at 5 years. METHODOLOGY The Mater University Study of Pregnancy (MUSP) is a prospective cohort study of 8556 mothers enrolled in early pregnancy. The relationship of obstetric and perinatal factors, maternal lifestyle, age and gender of the child, and social disadvantage were examined a...

The study investigated interpretive understanding, moral judgments, and emotion attributions in relation to social behaviour in a sample of 59 5-year-old, 123 7-year-old, and 130 9-year-old children. Interpretive understanding was assessed by two tasks measuring children's understanding of ambiguous situations. Moral judgments and emotion attributions were measured using two moral rule transgre...

OBJECTIVE The present study sought to identify both the ingredients for success and the potential impediments to social marketing effectiveness for healthy eating behaviour, focusing on studies conducted over the last 10 years. DESIGN A comprehensive literature review was undertaken examining seventeen databases to identify studies reporting the use of social marketing to address healthy eati...

We look at how the structure of social networks and the nature of social interactions affect the behaviour of Particle Swarms Optimisers. To this end, we propose a general model of communication and consensus which focuses on the effects of social interactions putting the details of the dynamics and the optimum seeking behaviour of PSOs into the background.

Many university students engage in risky alcohol consumption behaviour during their stay at university. So far, however, most studies have relied on cross-sectional surveys and paid little attention to the role of social ties. University students, however, are socially connected, so it is likely that their alcohol consumption behaviour is also connected. We hypothesized that university students...

Reading comprehension is an area of difficulty for many individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the Simple View of Reading, word recognition and oral language are both important determinants of reading comprehension ability. We provide a novel test of this model in 100 adolescents with ASD of varying intellectual ability. Further, we explore whether reading comprehension ...

Fertility behaviour includes not only biological but also social reproduction, involving a complex network of institutions. As Fortes highlights: 'The process of social reproduction, in broad terms, includes all those institutional mechanisms and customary activities and norms which serve to maintain, replenish and transmit the social capital from generation to generation' (1958: 2). Biological...