First Decade of Life Volume 1. Birth to Age Five: Development in the Preschool Years

The two volumes of this publication attempt to explain by multivariate analysis how selected factors influence the course of growth in an expanding set of behavioral domains. The explanatory power of the variables in four models varies considerably; some areas of child growth emerge as powerfully influenced by mutable circumstance, while others remain enigmatic. The research program described here has been paralleled in recent decades by others as prospective longitudinal study has returned to fashion.

A reprint, with a new introduction, of the author's Development in the Preschool Years with a new Foreword. A thorough longitudinal study, this volume describes and analyzes the psychological, social, and educational development of some 1000 children in the St. Louis area. Using biological, social, family, and maternal information, the author examines the physical, motor intellectual, linguistic, and social development. Sample includes black and white children, both inner-city and suburban, ranging in background from poor to wealthy. Originally published in 1980.

From the base reported in Volume I, the data of this work extend the sequence of events in several domains to age ten years. The predictors series consists of four arrays of variables from the early phases of child development. The earliest predictors were identified in the delivery room, and others were added in the preschool years. Here, the same children are studied from age five to ten, and the set of variables arrayed as potential influences in the same four models continues from the preschool period, with a few modifications.