Writing

Professional Scientific Publications

Books

Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience

Mark S. Blumberg, John H. Freeman, and Scott R. Robinson, Eds.

This handbook provides an introduction to recent advances in research at the intersection of developmental science and behavioral neuroscience, while emphasizing the central research perspectives of developmental psychobiology. Contributors to the Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience are drawn from a variety of fields, including developmental psychobiology, neuroscience, comparative psychology, and evolutionary biology, demonstrating the opportunities to advance our understanding of behavioral and neural development through enhanced interactions among parallel disciplines. The book is divided into six sections: Comparative and Epigenetic Perspectives, Foundations of Neural Development, Sensorimotor Systems, Early Experience and Developmental Plasticity, Regulatory Systems, and Learning and Memory. It provides an unprecedented overview of conceptual and methodological issues pertaining to comparative and developmental neuroscience that can serve as a roadmap for researchers and a textbook for educators.

Behavior of the Fetus

William P. Smotherman, and Scott R. Robinson, Eds.

Developmental science has seen a recent resurgence of interest in the prenatal development of behavior in animals, in part due to new technology that permits noninvasive monitoring of fetal activity and in part due to improved experimental techniques that permit direct recording of fetal behavior. All of these innovations are replacing speculations of the past with empirical data about prenatal behavior. This volume provides a summary of the current state of thought. Historically, researchers have approached the subject from many different fields: child development, pediatric medicine, obstetrics, behavioral embryology, neurobiology, and psychobiology. This volume attempts to unite these diverse interests by providing a concise introduction to the major conceptual issues, theoretical questions and empirically derived speculation as framed by leading scholars in the field of prenatal behavioral research. Researchers in fetal physiology and behavior, neonatal physiology and behavior, obstetrics, pediatrics, child development, and behavioral development will find this book useful in their own specific areas of concentration.

Book Chapters

Dr. Robinson's book chapters and journal articles may be accessed at Researchgate.net. Click on the book cover to link to Researchgate where you can download individual PDFs of these publications.

Robinson, S.R., & Mendez-Gallardo, V. (2017). Behavioral embryology. In B. Hopkins, E. Geangu & S. Linkenauger (Eds.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development, 2nd Edition (pp. 751-757). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, S.R. (2016). Yoke motor learning in the fetal rat: A model system for prenatal behavioral development. In Reissland, N., & Kisilevsky, B. S. (Eds.), Fetal Development: Research on Brain and Behavior, Environmental Influences, and Emerging Technologies (pp. 43-66). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Adolph, K.E., & Robinson, S.R. (2015). Motor development. In Liben, L.S., Mueller, U., & Lerner, R. (Eds.), Handbook of Child Psychology and Developmental Science, Volume 2, Cognitive Processes, 7th Edition (pp. 113-157). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Adolph, K.E., & Robinson, S.R. (2013). The road to walking: What learning to walk tells us about development. In Zelazo, P.D. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology (pp. 403-443). New York: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, S.R., & Méndez-Gallardo, V. (2010). Amniotic fluid as an extended milieu intérieur. In Hood, K.E., Halpern, C.T., Greenberg, G., & Lerner, R.M. (Eds.). The Handbook of Developmental Science, Behavior, and Genetics (pp. 234-284). Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
Brumley, M.R., & Robinson, S.R. (2010). Experience in the perinatal development of action systems. In Blumberg, M.S., Freeman, J.H., Jr., & Robinson, S.R. (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Developmental Behavioral Neuroscience (pp. 181-209). New York: Oxford University Press.

Rizzo, M., Robinson, S.R., & Neale, V. (2006). The brain in the wild: Tracking human behavior in natural and naturalistic settings. In: R. Parasuraman & M. Rizzo (Eds.), Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work (pp. 113-128). New York: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, S.R., & Kleven, G.A. (2005). Learning to move before birth. In B. Hopkins & S. P. Johnson (Eds.), Prenatal Development of Postnatal Functions (pp. 131-175). (Advances in Infancy Research series.) Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
Robinson, S.R. (2005). Behavioral embryology. In B. Hopkins (Ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development (pp. 469-473). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robinson, S.R., & Brumley, M.R. (2005). Prenatal behavior. In I.Q. Whishaw & B. Kolb (Eds.), The Behaviour of the Laboratory Rat: A Handbook with Tests, (pp. 257-265). New York: Oxford University Press.
Smotherman, W.P., & Robinson, S.R. (1998). Prenatal ontogeny of sensory responsiveness and learning. In G. Greenberg & M. Haraway (Eds.), Comparative Psychology: A Handbook (pp. 586-601). New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Robinson, S.R., & Smotherman, W.P. (1995). Habituation and classical conditioning in the rat fetus: Opioid involvements. In J.-P. Lecanuet, N. A. Krasnegor, W. P. Fifer, & W. P. Smotherman (Eds.), Fetal Development: A Psychobiological Perspective (pp. 295-314). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.

Smotherman, W.P., & Robinson, S.R. (1995). Tracing developmental trajectories into the prenatal period. In J.-P. Lecanuet, N. A. Krasnegor, W. P. Fifer, & W. P. Smotherman (Eds.), Fetal Development: A Psychobiological Perspective (pp. 15-32). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum & Associates.
Robinson, S.R., & Smotherman, W.P. (1992). The emergence of behavioral regulation during fetal development. In G. Turkewitz (Ed.), Developmental Psychobiology. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 662, pp. 53-83.
Smotherman, W. P., & Robinson, S.R. (1991). Accessibility of the rat fetus for psychobiological investigation. In H. N. Shair, M. A. Hofer & G. Barr (Eds.), Developmental Psychobiology: New Methods and Changing Concepts (pp. 148-164). New York: Oxford University Press.

Robinson, S.R., & Smotherman, W.P. (1991). Fetal learning: Implications for the development of kin recognition. In P. G. Hepper (Ed.), Kin Recognition (pp. 308-334). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Robinson, S.R., & Smotherman, W. P. (1988). Chance and chunks in the ontogeny of fetal behavior. In W. P. Smotherman & S. R. Robinson (Eds.), Behavior of the Fetus (pp. 95-115). Caldwell, NJ: Telford Press.

Smotherman, W. P., & Robinson, S.R. (1988). Dimensions of fetal investigation. In W. P. Smotherman & S. R. Robinson (Eds.), Behavior of the Fetus (pp. 19-34). Caldwell, NJ: Telford Press.
Smotherman, W. P., & Robinson, S.R. (1988). The uterus as environment: The ecology of fetal behavior. In E. M. Blass (Ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Neurobiology, vol. 9, Developmental Psychobiology and Behavioral Ecology (pp. 149-196). New York: Plenum.
Smotherman, W. P., & Robinson, S.R. (1987). Psychobiology of fetal experience in the rat. In N. A. Krasnegor, E. M. Blass, M. A. Hofer & W. P. Smotherman (Eds.), Perinatal Development: A Psychobiological Perspective (pp. 39-60). Orlando: Academic Press.

General Science
and Fiction

Books intended for a General Readership

Current Nonfiction Projects

Wild Womb: What Animal Behavior Teaches Us about Life before Birth

Life before birth. It is a subject of concern to every woman contemplating pregnancy, to advocates on both sides of the national debate over abortion, and to the scientifically curious who ponder the question of origins: Where do we come from? But “Life before birth” is not the right way to think about the problem of prenatal development. “Living before birth” is more apt.

In Wild Womb, Dr. S. R. Robinson relates the fascinating, strange, and personal story of the fetus and the world before birth. Told by one of the pioneers in the study of fetal behavior, Wild Womb paints a picture of the fetus not as a still-life, but as an active, behaving, exploring creature that faces two imperatives during its long sojourn in utero: survive in the moment, and prepare for the future. To meet these challenges, the fetus has a secret weapon. It behaves, it gains experience, and it learns.

From his unique vantage, Dr. Robinson describes a small revolution in developmental science that has been brewing over the past 40 years. It is a revolution with roots in child psychology and obstetric practice, but also drawing crucial information from diverse fields, such as animal behavior, ecology, neuroscience, complex systems, evolution, history of science, and even robotics. Some of the dramatic findings of fetal research have percolated to general public awareness, stories about fetuses that can hear their mother’s voice or newborns that remember what their pregnant mother ate. Some stories accepted by the public are myths and some are wishful thinking. But for every fabulous account, there are a dozen more that are grounded in real science, yet remain buried in the laboratories and libraries of specialists. Wild Womb tells their stories.

Current Fiction Projects

The Mongooses of Keesi Myrr

Coco is a young dwarf mongoose that lives with her small family group in the wild lands of southern Africa. Her greatest aspiration is to bear and raise her own children, but she is forbidden by the rigid rules of her society, where there can be only one Leader, and only the Leader has the right to breed. Coco risks giving birth anyway, and she believes that enduring the vicious punishments inflicted on her is the most serious problem she faces... until their world is uprooted by a flood of desperate migrants fleeing from mysterious invaders.

As the life she has known disintegrates, and rejected by those closest to her, Coco nevertheless fights to keep her community safe. The story follows Coco as she seeks a way to reunite her splintered family while coping with familiar dangers of the bush, surviving new threats posed by marauding gangs and the mysterious striped invaders, and ultimately facing a relentless predator, as she leads her family to a place of safety known only from legend.

The Mongooses of Keesi Myrr is an epic animal fantasy written in the tradition of classics such as Watership Down and the Jungle Books, from the mind of an animal behavior researcher. It is the first in a projected six-book series about the mongooses of southern Africa.

Bipedal

Makenzie Stone—Mak to her friends—is working as a temporary assistant in a research lab with the boring job of transcoding old video tapes of behavioral experiments. At the end of one tape she chances upon the fragment of an earlier recording, which appears to show a lab rat in its cage, walking on two legs.

Is the bipedal rat a prank or hoax, or the result of a bizarre experiment worthy of Dr. Moreau or the rats of NIMH? Assisted by her closest friends, Mak begins an investigation of the secret of the bipedal rat that will lead her through a gantlet of opposing interests, from animal rights protesters and bureaucratic university officials to professors with conflicting motives and former students with scores to settle. But when the first body turns up, Mak realizes she faces a more serious problem.

Drawn from the pages of modern biomedical research, Bipedal is a technothriller written by a former professor and research scientist and inspired by actual events and real experiments in a behavioral neuroscience laboratory.

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