Nature and Nurture during Infancy and Early Childhood

by Robert Plomin, John C. DeFries, David W. Fulker

Overview

In light of work by quantitative geneticists, the authors reconsider the interaction of heredity and environment in the development of individual differences during infancy and early childhood. Quantitative genetics offers a general theory of the development of individual differences that suggests novel concepts and research strategies: the idea that genetic influences operate in age-to-age change as well as in continuity, for example. Quantitative genetics also provides powerful methods to address questions of change and continuity which are helpfully introduced in this study. Longitudinal quantitative genetic research is essential to the understanding of developmental change and continuity. The largest and longes longitudinal adoption study is the Colorado Adoption Project, which has generated much of the rich data on the progress from infancy to early childhood on which the authors draw throughout the book.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521343701
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/29/1988
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction; 2. Individual differences and group differences; 3. Quantitative genetics as the basis for a general theory of individual differences; 4. The Colorado Adoption Project; 5. Transitions and changes: description and prediction; 6. Transitions and changes: genetic and environmental etiologies; 7. Introduction to model fitting; 8. Fitting sibling and parent-offspring models in the Colorado Adoption Project; 9. Interactions; 10. Genotype-environment correlation; 11. Genetics and measures of the family environment: the nature of nurture; 12. Conclusions; References; Author index; Subject index.