Recent genetic discoveries offer a new lens through which to study cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social processes that are foundational to children's development. In this article, we review the latest advances in genomics--genome-wide association studies and the polygenic scores that have come out of them--and discuss how these techniques…

In this commentary, I delineate several questions raised by the Hammond and Drummond (2019) paper: (a) to why there seems to be an association between state positive emotion and prosocial behavior in young children, and if and how early positively tinged prosocial behavior provides a pathway to (b) later prosocial behavior more generally…

Research Findings: Using a sample of 568 students from 61 kindergarten classrooms whose primary caregivers completed a questionnaire describing their child's early childhood education and care (ECEC) by year from birth to pre-kindergarten, we identified seven pathways characterizing children's ECEC experiences using a latent class analysis. Once…

Conoley, Powers, and Gutkin (2020) called for an increased emphasis on models of psychological service delivery that are primarily indirect, adult-focused, and geared toward systems-level change in the schools. They asserted that research in school psychology should not focus on the problems of individual children and youth but address the…

In this article, Peter Molenaar responds to three commentaries (this issue) on his article, "An Interpretation of Part of Gilbert Gottlieb's Legacy: Developmental Systems Theory Contra Developmental Behavior Genetics." He addresses aspects of relational developmental systems (RDS) mentioned and questions raised in each of the…

The concepts and paradigms "development", "evolution", and "developmental behavior genetics" target, in their statements, populations. The laws of genetics and evolution are supposed to apply to every single case in a population. It can be counted among the major contributions of Gottlieb (1992, 1995) to have pointed…

Molenaar's (2015) article concerns Developmental Systems Theory (DST) in relation to behavior genetics and he presents implications of DST for empirical research, especially the need for subject-specific studies. In this commentary, the article is discussed from a broader developmental science perspective, particularly regarded through the lens of…

The main theme of this paper concerns the persistent critique of Gilbert Gottlieb on developmental behavior genetics and my reactions to this critique, the latter changing from rejection to complete acceptation. Concise characterizations of developmental behavior genetics, developmental systems theory (to which Gottlieb made essential…

We describe an integrated theory of individual differences that traces the behavioral development of life history from genes to brain to reproductive strategy. We provide evidence that a single common factor, the K-Factor, underpins a variety of life-history parameters, including an assortment of sexual, reproductive, parental, familial, and…

Provides an introduction to a special section on developmental behavioral genetics (the study of genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in behavioral development), discussing the potentialities of the interdiscipline and presenting an overview of the following articles. (Author/RH)

Discusses, with special reference to socially disapproved conduct, possible family and school influences on behavioral development. Influences are discussed in terms of alternative explanations for causal inferences relating environmental variables and children's disorders; mechanisms and processes; persistence of environmental effects; and…

Examines the interplay between genes and environment and argues that the development of much individual variation can be explained in terms of relatively simple forms of underlying regulation. Looks at "sensitive periods," during which variation is produced by experience received at a particular age. Includes a discussion of the…

Studied 112 preterm infants to determine developmental changes and stability of individual differences. Results indicate significant developmental gains with age, and highly significant individual stability of performance across age. (RJC)

Attempts to describe links between transactional or dialectical and mechanistic models of development and provides a rationale for why both are useful. Examples of data sets deriving from early experiences are provided. Concludes that the applicability of the model for describing behavioral development is influenced by inter-/intra-individual…

Discusses the history of the hierarchical epigenetic systems view as applied to human development and offers examples of its implementation. Notes the agreement by many authors that the multilevel systems view is the right model for developmental psychology in both human and animal studies. (BC)