Patterns of Infantile Experience and the Developmental Process

In this paper I shall report on a small fragment from a body of research material dealing with behavior and development during the first year of life.1 From detailed observations of young babies and their families, I hope to derive greater understanding of the manner in which the patterning of life experience reflects the developmental process, and at the same time determines the course of development. By the term patterning of life experience I refer to the infinite number of behavior episodes that take place hour by hour, day by day, and month by month. In other words, I refer to what babies do, when they do it, how they do it, and under what circumstances behavior takes particular forms and intensities. I expect to demonstrate that what infants experience as they are fed, clothed, bathed; the nature of their perceptual and motoric encounters with the world about and with their own bodies, and most importantly their transactions with the mother and with other people—the nature of these events is influenced by the baby's established reaction tendencies (which may be biologically given or acquired), and by the mother and outer circumstances generally—the actual reality to which they must adapt.

The relationship between intrinsic characteristics of the organism, built-in maturational sequences, and environmental forces and conditions, as all of these affect developmental course has received much discussion. My view of the old "nature-nurture" problem is rather different from the most customary ones. A discussion of how I conceptualize developmental events will be developed as data are presented, and in the last section of this paper.