ABSTRACT
Peter H. W olff Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital Medical Center
INTRODUCTION
cient to constrain practice, so that the analysis of the underlying theoretical notions guiding practice may be superfluous. There is, however, a large number of developmental variations, now defined as handicaps and targeted for early intervention, that were until recently considered to be normal or at least accept able variations of the human condition. In the case of these “ marginal hand icaps,” it is frequently impossible to predict exactly what kinds of disorders could be expected on the basis of the assessment variable, because the presump tion of handicap is based on value judgments about optimal development that may not be shared between those who intervene and those who are targeted for intervention. Even when there is consensus that a particular variation of early behavioral adaptation will result in some less than optimal outcome, it may be impossible to specify the nature and severity of that outcome, since the same global assessment variable can have qualitatively different developmental conse quences. Some of these will be entirely adaptive and “ normal” under most environmental conditions; others will surface as handicaps in one ecological context, but appear as normal and adaptive variations under other conditions.
