ABSTRACT
During most of this century explanations of stable patterns of social behavior among young children have emphasized variation in environmental experiences and ignored, sometimes to exclusion, the influence of those infant qualities that psychologists call temperamental. A seminal axiom of the disciplines that study life processes is that the inherent properties of the form under study make some contribution to the growth of that form as it exploits successive encounters with the surroundings. Whenever a generation of theorists overemphasizes the influence of the surroundings and ignores the endogenous characteristics of the form, or awards too much power to the form and not enough to the environment, future generations make the necessary correction. The sciences of human behavior are in a transition during which the relevance of the child’s inherent characteristics, which are only partially revealed in temperamental predispositions, is being recognized. Thomas and Chess (1977), Plomin and Rowe (1979), Rothbart and Derryberry (1981), Carey and McDevitt (1978), and many others have helped to effect this change in attitude. This body of work implies that the obvious variation among infants in behavioral characteristics invites different treatments by family members and peers, influences the child’s selection of actions, and constrains the sequence of choices the child makes across the eras of growth.
