𝔖 Bobbio Scriptorium
✦   LIBER   ✦

A useful toolbook for training and development. Interviewing Children: a Guide for Child Care and Forensic Practitioners. Michelle Aldridge and Joanne Wood. John Wiley, Chichester, UK, 1998. No. of pages 229. ISBN 0-471-98207-5. Price £16.99 (paperback).

✍ Scribed by Helen Westcott


Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
1999
Tongue
English
Weight
53 KB
Volume
13
Category
Article
ISSN
0888-4080

No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.

✦ Synopsis


for the traditional scientist is to ask `Did Kanzi understand the request and act upon it, or is there a simpler explanation such as the name of the object is a discriminative stimulus, and Kanzi approaches and retrieves the object simply as a matter of instrumental conditioning?' This is the kind of question that leads to an epistemological cul-de-sac according to Taylor. The situation where a human being was told something that resulted in appropriate action on the part of the human would not be open to the same scepticism and questioning as would occur if a bonobo had heard the same thing and carried out the same action.

In Chapter 4 Savage-Rumbaugh reappears with a vengeance. This chapter challenges the critics of the bonobo project, and challenges conventional wisdom in other ways, right down to conventional wisdom concerning the social rules of bonobo society. It is a well-reasoned, but undoubtedly controversial attack on the nay-sayers and conventional thinkers. It attacks the double standard of what is acceptable interpretation of human behaviour and what is acceptable as an explanation of non-human behaviour.

This book is worthwhile reading. It is provocative and entertaining. The issues it raises are fundamental. Are we dierent and above all other species? The authors scream `NO'. You be the judge.