This article provides a review and synthesis of concepts, research programs, and measures in the infant and child temperament area. First, the authors present an overview of five classical approaches to the study of child temperament that continue to stimulate research today. Subsequently, the authors carve out key definitional criteria for…

Researchers in the fields of cognitive and language development have made less use of large-scale longitudinal designs and of person-centered approaches to data analysis than have researchers in the fields of social and personality development. It is argued that differences among domains of developmental psychology in the research methods employed…

Describes features and benefits of the person-centered approach to studying personality, identifies unanswered questions, and suggests research directions. Benefits noted include focus on intraindividual structure, descriptive efficiency, use of types as moderator variables, predictive validity, and conceptual clarity and intuitive appeal.…

This longitudinal study examined consistency and change in human personality. Rather than studying the consistency of individual differences over time, an approach which considers only the stability of a variable at the group level and ignores differences in stability at an individual level, this study used a person-centered approach to study…

Guided by specific theoretical and methodological points of view--the phylogenetic perspective and the universalistic approach respectively--this paper reports on a worldwide study of the antecedents and effects of parental acceptance and rejection. Parental acceptance-rejection theory postulates that rejected children throughout our species share…

Reviews research on the heritability of intellectual factors, personality factors, and psychopathology. Discusses the importance of investigating within-family environmental differences in order to understand the environmental origins of individual differences in development. (Author/BJV)

This guide for infant day care providers examines the importance of early experience for brain development and strategies for providing optimal infant care. The introduction discusses the current devaluation of day care and idealization of maternal care and identifies benefits of quality day care experience for intellectual development, sleep…

This book, recommended for grade three, is a teaching aid to help children learn skills essential for successful living, develop social competence, and acquire respect for individual differences. Because children learn by doing things with others, small groups of four are suggested for classroom activities. There are seven group activity sheets,…

Applied a person-centered approach to childhood personality development in 28 diverse samples of 3- to 6-year-olds studied over 6 years. Identified resilient, overcontrolled, and undercontrolled personality types. Found that the undercontrolled personality type related to intellectual decline over 6 years. The number of family risks predicted…