Boo! Culture, Experience, and the Startle Reflex

Ronald C. Simons is Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington.

". . .a useful source for those who want to pursue studies of similar behaviors."--Journal of Anthropological Research"A car backfires, your foot slips, a child shouts 'Boo!' In these and many other situations we respond. That brief, but often intense, startle reflex takes us by surprise. We soon recover only to be startled again and again. In Boo!, Ronald Simons reports the results of his twenty-year interest in the startle reflex. He gives a scholarly, exhaustive yet fascinating account of the startle reflex including when, where, why, and how it occurs, and therole of experience and culture in the expression of the reflex. In an informative and engaging presentation, Simons describes his own extensive observations of startle and skillfully uses a wide range of literary,physiological, psychological, and anthropological resources. . . . Boo! . . . has greatly increased my knowledge of this intriguing aspect of human behavior. Simons has written a book on a very specific response that turns out to be of general interest and significance."--Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences"This book is the culmination of Simons's longstanding interest in disorders of startle, and more specifically in the culture bound startle syndromes. He has carried out extensive studies on Latah in Malaysia. The book contains an encyclopedic description of references to startle in literature, the press and in everyday life. The book is beautifully produced. BOO! can be highly recommended as an important, scholarly and elegant source, not only forpeople interested in startle and its disorders, but as an example of cultural determinants of pathophysiological aspects of human behavior." -- Transcultural Psychiatry, 37(4)". . .a useful source for those who want to pursue studies of similar behaviors."--Journal of Anthropological Research"A car backfires, your foot slips, a child shouts 'Boo!' In these and many other situations we respond. That brief, but often intense, startle reflex takes us by surprise. We soon recover only to be startled again and again. In Boo!, Ronald Simons reports the results of his twenty-year interest in the startle reflex. He gives a scholarly, exhaustive yet fascinating account of the startle reflex including when, where, why, and how it occurs, and therole of experience and culture in the expression of the reflex. In an informative and engaging presentation, Simons describes his own extensive observations of startle and skillfully uses a wide range of literary,physiological, psychological, and anthropological resources. . . . Boo! . . . has greatly increased my knowledge of this intriguing aspect of human behavior. Simons has written a book on a very specific response that turns out to be of general interest and significance."--Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences"This book is the culmination of Simons's longstanding interest in disorders of startle, and more specifically in the culture bound startle syndromes. He has carried out extensive studies on Latah in Malaysia. The book contains an encyclopedic description of references to startle in literature, the press and in everyday life. The book is beautifully produced. BOO! can be highly recommended as an important, scholarly and elegant source, not only forpeople interested in startle and its disorders, but as an example of cultural determinants of pathophysiological aspects of human behavior." -- Transcultural Psychiatry, 37(4)

• PART I: STARTLE AND HYPERSTARTLE ; Introduction ; 1. Startle as a Personal Experience and as a Social Resource ; 2. Making People Jumpy: Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn Create a Hyperstartler ; 3. Variations on a Theme: Being Startled Makes One Ill ; 4. The Startle Museum I: Exhibits of Startle Sorted by their Expository Uses ; 5. The Startle Museum II: Exhibits of Startle Sorted by Properties of Startle Events ; PART II: LATAH AND OTHER STARTLE-MATCHING SYNDROMES ; 6. Attention Capture and the Startle-Matching Syndromes ; 7. Latah: The Paradigmatic Startle-Matching Syndrome ; 8. Explaining Latah: The Importance of Descriptive Detail ; 9. The Startle-Matching Syndrome in Other Cultures ; 10. Culture, Biology, and Individual Experience