Early Life Experience and the Development of Competence

Two infants and their families were studied during the first two years of life. The research plan combined detailed extensive observations of the children in their own milieu with an elaborate system of coding, scoring, and computer processing of the narrative data. Based on the frequency with which each observable behavioural event occurred, and the context in which it was observed, quantitative measures of stable patterns of experience were obtained.

It proved that among the aspects of early experience that were significantly different for the two children were the following: The affective quality of social interactions; the degree to which mothers (and other persons in the family) tended to accommodate to and conversely intrude upon and direct the child's ongoing behaviour; and the relative frequency with which certain specific social inputs, such as 'facilitating', 'making requests', 'showing' and 'giving things', etc., were provided. They also included the circumstance that the sensory modalities employed by the respective mothers differed in the emphasis lent to the distance versus the near receptor systems; the degree to which mothers drew attention to and utilized inanimate (thing aspects) of the environment and the degree to which they allowed the child to move about in space unhindered.