International Journal of Behavioral Development

Intra-individual change in behaviour with age constitutes the essential element in developmental research but, unless age is broken down into its component parts, age is devoid of meaning. The issues involved are discussed from the perspective of epidemiology as applied to developmental psychopathology. Methodological concerns are discussed with respect to continuities and discontinuities in development (with special reference to the cumulative emergence of skills and variable consistency over the life span), secular trends, and the distinction between individual and groupaggregated age trends. The different components of chronological age are considered in terms of cognitive level, different types of biological maturity, and the duration of type of life experiences. The same components are discussed with respect to the issues involved in the study of differential effects of experiences according to their timing in the developmental sequence, and maturational delay.

Previous approaches to the study of successful ageing are reviewed. It is argued that there has been an absence of theory guiding this research; an implicit negativism in the proposed conceptions of well-being; a neglect of the possibility for continued growth and development in old age; and a failure to see conceptions of positive ageing as human constructions that are open to cultural variations and historical change. An alternative approach that draws on the convergence in life-span developmental theories, clinical theories of personal growth, and mental health perspectives is presented. Six criteria of well-being result from this integration: self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth. These dimensions are defined and their relevance for the study of adulthood and ageing is discussed. New avenues for investigating successful ageing as a human construction are presented with emphasis given to the complementarity between quantitative and qualitative research strategies.

In cross-cultural research the validity and universality of stages of preconventional reasoning in Kohlberg's theory of moral development has often been taken for granted, while in developmental research a growing bulk of evidence yields indications that the theoretical assumptions underlying preconventional morality may not be adequate to the data. In order to further clarify the problems raised by this research, data collected from Icelandic and German subjects about a Kohlberg dilemma were analysed. In order to probe the structure of stage 2 in particular, only those interview protocols were taken into account which were given stage 2 global scores in Kohlberg's Joe/Judy dilemma. Qualitative analyses of subjects' reasoning showed a substantial amount of arguments which could not be matched to criterion judgements in the standard scoring manual. Structurally these arguments could be interpreted in terms of stage 2 reasoning. With regard to content, however, they showed genuine normative and relationship concerns which do not fit the individualistic and instrumental exchange notion of stage 2. The findings evidence that there may be more variety in early moral reasoning than demonstrated by published research. An action-theoretical framework is proposed in order to achieve a reformulation of preconventional moral reasoning.

In this article, the connections between adolescents' perceptions of their relationships with parents and the concept of individuation are explored. Individuation is discussed with respect to its relevance for understanding the transformations that occur in parent-child relationships as the child moves through adolescence toward adulthood. It is proposed that individuation is a necessary process in the transition from childhood to adulthood since it allows the child to develop a self-identity that is separate from that of parents while at the same time to remain connected to parents as important sources of advice and psychological support. Some data are provided suggesting that the separation and connectedness that characterise the process of individuation are the product of a transformation in adolescents' perceptions of parents in which parents, who are seen in childhood as "allknowing" and "all powerful" beings are first de-idealised and then come to be appreciated as persons themselves. Finally, the value of the concept of individuation for understanding adolescence is proposed to lie in its focus on the child in the context of relationship with others rather than as a separate entity. This focus is seen as providing a basis for attending to the social context in the study of adolescence.

Patterns of social interactions and the relation of these patterns to quality of attachment to the mother were examined at 2 and 5 years. At 2 years, 49 children and their mothers were observed in three free-play sessions which included the child, his or her mother, and a familiar peer. At 5 years, 33 children returned for a fourth session of mother-child-peer. Analysis of the interactions within sessions indicated a "balanced" pattern in that interaction with one partner (mother) reduced opportunities for interaction with the other (peer). The quality of attachment to the mother at 2 years had an effect on social responsivity to both mother and peer; insecure attachment to the mother predicted decreased social responsivity to both mother and peer at 2 years. Mothers' patterns of social interactions with their children were examined in an effort to explain possible discontinuities in the relationship between attachment and responsivity. Implications for attachment theory and the assessment of attachment are discussed.

This research focused on 45 6-month-olds who were at risk for developmental delay due to poor socioeconomic circumstances, their responses to a learning task, and the subsequent prediction to performance on standardised tests during the preschool years. A rank classification for qualitative differences in learning proved preferable to a more complex behavioural count system. Task Rank was used to predict subsequent test performance on the Stanford Binet at 24, 36, and 48 months. Half the infants had been randomly assigned at birth to a day care intervention programme. Both Task Rank and the Bayley MDI at 6 months were good predictors of later test scores for the control group but not the day care intervention group. Responses to the learning task added significantly to the predictions obtained from the Bayley. These results suggest that tasks measured in infancy involving information processing in a novel situation are related to later functioning on standard assessment tests for children reared in less than optimal circumstances.

The parents of 128 Swedish preschoolers were independently interviewed concerning their child-rearing attitudes and values, and a parental agreement index was computed as suggested by Block, Block, and Morrison (1981). Mothers and fathers disagreed on a substantial number of items, with mothers showing more expressive and fathers more instrumental concerns. There were few differences between the parents of girls and boys. As in the Block et al.'s (1981) research, parental agreement was associated with marital quality. Parental agreement was also associated with contemporaneous and earlier maternal reports of ego-resiliency in both boys and girls, as well as with maternal reports of ego-control in girls only. There were no significant correlations between parental agreement and measures of intellectual development in either boys or girls. The results suggest that parental agreement may have a less general and a less gender-differentiated impact on psychological functioning in contemporary Sweden than was true in the United States when Block et al.'s (1981) data were gathered 20 years ago.