Early Influences on Development: Fact or Fancy?.

level can forsee the deviancy disappearing at other ages or in other contexts. Hyperactivity, for example, can be seen as both normal and abnormal depending on whether the child is a pre-schooler or an adolescent. The mother who can appreciate the discontinuous nature of her child's behavior is better equipped to make qualitative changes in her treatment of the child as the child's activities and requirements change with development. The mother who is restricted to more primitive levels of viewing her offspring enmeshes the child at later stages in obsolete social and affective relationships formed during infancy. From the low levels of social cognition found in large segments of our society (Chandler, 1973; Looft, 1972) one might expect a much higher proportion of severe caretaking casualties than appears to be the case. Possibly, the same kinds of self-righting tendencies that Wad dington (1966) postulated for biological development are operative at the psychological level. One of these self-righting tendencies might exist in the transactions between parent and child. The mother has little difficulty viewing the infant from a sensorimotor level of cognition while the infant is in the sensorimotor period. However, as the child progresses through his own development, his caretakers are forced to view him from different perspectives, potentially causing a restructuring of their view of the child. At each new level the child makes interactional demands at higher levels of complexity, frequently surprising parents by this emerging precocity. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.235 on Fri, 07 Oct 2016 06:09:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Early Influences on Development A second major self-righting tendency might be found at the societal level. To the extent that the scientific and educational es tablishment are limited to a concrete view that perceives developmen tal deviancy as foreordained by poor genes or perinatal complications, there is little in the way of therapy to offer mothers with problems. To the extent that society as a whole can move from a main-effect to a transactional model of development a new context is provided for educating mothers toward understanding the intricate interplay between organismic and environmental factors in the determination of developmental outcomes. To summarize, disorders in development have been retrospectively attributed to a variety of early constitutional or environmental factors. When these predisposing factors have been studied prospectively little support is given to their causal role or their predictive value for later deviancy. Evidence for qualitative continuities and stabilities in development appear to be artifacts of an incomplete analysis of the child in its environment. When the two are examined in combination, complex reciprocal transactions are found which reduce or amplify ear ly problems in behavior. Developmental outcomes must be interpreted as the products of a child's characteristics, his material environment and the cognitive levels and values of his social milieu. Where the social environment fosters rigidity, stereotyping, and concreteness in thought and behavior, early deviancies can become resistant to the normal restruc turing implicit in development. Where flexibility, openness, and adap tability are fundamental characteristics of the environment, early problems are dissipated as the child advances in his construction and organization of both his cognitive and social world.