ABSTRACT
The "life span view of human development" has become crystallized as a set of interrelated ideas about the nature of human development and change. The idea of embeddedness is that the key phenomena of human life exist at multiple levels of being; at any one point in time variables from any and all of these levels may contribute to human functioning. Support both for the generalizability of the temperamental attributes studied by Thomas and Chess and for the goodness-of-fit model is provided in a cross-cultural study by Super and Harkness. Although most current temperament research invovles an emphasis on infants or young children, our research has included a focus on the late childhood-to-late adolescent age range. There is evidence for the use of the goodness-of-fit model in contexts other than the home and in regard to relationships other than that of parent-child.
