The Uncommon Child PDF
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The Unco m mon Child Genesis of Behavior Series Editors: MICHAEL LEWIS Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children Educational Testing Service Princeton. New Jersey and LEONARD A. ROSENBLUM Downstate Medical Center Brooklyn. New York Volume 1 The Development of Affect Volume 2 The Child and Its Family Volume 3 The Uncommon Child The Uncommon Child Edited by MICHAEL LEWIS Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children Educational Testing Service Princeton, New Jersey and LEONARD A. ROSENBLUM Downstate Medical Center Brooklyn, New York PLENUM PRESS . NEW YORK AND LONDON Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title: The Uncommon child. (Genesis of behavior; v. 3) Includes index. 1. Exceptional children. I. Lewis, Michael, 1937 Uan. 10)· II. Rosenblum, Leonard A. III. Series. RJ499.U46 305.2'3 80-20601 ISBN·13: 978·14684-3775·1 e-1SBN·13: 978·14684-3773-7 DOl: 10.1007/978-14684-3773-7 First Printing-February 1981 Second Printing - February 1983 © 1981 Plenum Press, New York Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013 All rights reserved No part of this bo.ok may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Contributors GERSHON BERKSON, Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, Chicago, IL 60680 WILLIAM B. CAREY, Pediatric Practice, Media, PA 19063; Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania Medical School, Philadel phia, P A 19104 BERNICE T. EIDUSON, UCLA, Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, The Center for the Health Services, Los Angeles, CA 90024 JOEL GRINKER, Rockefeller University, 66th Street and York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 MARCI HANSON, San Francisco State University, Department of Special Education, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132 MICHAEL LEWIS, Institute for the Study of Exceptional Children, Edu cational Testing Service, Rosedale Road, Princeton, NJ 08541 HANUS PAPOUSEK, Max Planck Institut fur Psychiatrie, Kraepelinstrasse 10, D-8000 Munich, Federal Republic of Germany EDWARD H. PLIMPTON, State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center, 450 Clarkson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11203 HENRY RICCIUTI, Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850 HALBERT B. ROBINSON, Child Development Research Group, Depart ment of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 LEONARD ROSENBLUM, State University of New York, Downstate Med ical Center, 450 Clarkson Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11203 v vi CONTRIBUTORS ARNOLD SAMEROFF, Illinois Institute for Developmental Disabilities, 1640 West Roosevelt Road, Chicago, IL 60608 STEPHANIE SCHAEFFER, 140 Cadman Plaza West, Brooklyn, NY 11201 RONALD SEIFER, Institute for the Study of Developmental Disabilities, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle, Chicago, IL 60680 URSULA THUNBERG, Child Adolescent Service, Bedford/Stuyvesant Community Mental Health Center, 1360 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11216 Preface How are we to understand the complex forces that shape human behavior? A variety of diverse perspectives, drawing upon studies of human behavioral ontogeny, as well as humanity's evolutionary heri tage, seem to provide the best likelihood of success. It is in the attempt to synthesize such potentially disparate approaches to human devel opment into an integrated whole that we undertake this series on the Genesis of Behavior. In many respects, the incredible burgeoning of research in child development over the last decade or two seems like a thousand lines of inquiry spreading outward in an incoherent starburst of effort. The need exists to provide, on an ongoing basis, an arena of discourse within which the threads of continuity between those diverse lines of research on human development can be woven into a fabric of meaning and understanding. Scientists, scholars, and those who attempt to translate their efforts into the practical realities of the care and guidance of infants and children are the audience that we seek to reach. Each requires the opportunity to see-to the degree that our knowledge in given areas permits-various aspects of development in a coherent, integrated fashion. It is hoped that this series, which will bring together research on infant biology, developing infant capacities, animal models, the impact of social, cultural, and familial forces on development, and the distorted products of such forces under certain circumstances, will serve these important social and scientific needs. Each volume in this series will deal with a single topic that has broad significance for our understanding of human development. Into its focus on a specific area, each volume will bring both empirical and theoretical perspectives and analysis at the many levels of investigation necessary to a balanced appreciation of the complexity of the problem at hand. Thus, each volume will consider the confluence of the genetic, vii viii PREFACE psychological, and neurophysiological factors that influence the indi vidual infant and the dyadic, familial, and societal contexts within which development occurs. Moreover, each volume will bring together the vantage points provided by studies of human infants and pertinent aspects of animal behavior, with particular emphasis on nonhuman primates. Just as this series will draw upon the special expertise and viewpoints of workers in many disciplines, it is our hope that the product of these labors will speak to the needs and interests of a diverse audience, including physiologists, ethologists, sociologists, psychologists, pediatricians, obstetricians, and clinicians and scientists in many related fields. As in years past, we hold to our original objectives in this series of volumes to provide both stimulation and guidance to all among us who are concerned with humans, their past, their present, and their future. The present volume deviates from our traditional approach of presenting chapters which center around a particular theme in the social development of the young child. We have instead chosen to consider the more general topic of uncommonness and have collected a group of scholars who have spent some time focusing on this problem from their particular perspective. Each paper, operating from a partic ular view, deals with the notion of uncommonness by considering both the subjects' characteristics as well as the contextual cues provided by the social environment. Although we have chosen to title this volume The Uncommon Child, we recognize that by giving this label to the child it is implied that the uncommonness is inherent to it; that is, it is a characteristic of the child. The chapters recognize that uncom monness is the function of both child characteristics and environmental conditions. Uncommonness has been defined as (1) possession of certain subject characteristics, such as Down's syndrome; (2) a circum stance of rearing or the nature of the environment such as having a schizophrenic parent; and (3) the characteristics of these subjects as they interact and function within a particular social and physical milieu. Although some of the chapters have chosen to enter the dialogue from the subject-characteristics or the environmental-features point of view, each reflects the definition of uncommonness as the interaction of subject characteristics and environmental-demand qual ities. Following a chapter which describes the ecological perspective in viewing uncommonness in children, the first set of chapters, dealing with temperament differences, intellectual giftedness, Down's syn drome, obesity, and the sick and dying infant, focuses on specific characteristics of the child as they interact with the environment to the PREFACE ix benefit or detriment of the child and family. The subsequent chapters view interactive process from an alternative perspective, namely, the impact of uncommon encounters on the infants' developing capacities. These latter chapters, then, deal with such topics as malnourishment and maltreatment of infants, and the effects of otherwise disordered socializing experiences as may occur with mentally ill or absent parents or peers, or within nontraditional family and social structures. The chapters in this volume derive from papers presented and discussed at a conference on The Uncommon Child held under the auspices and with the support of the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey. The participants in the conference were Gershon Berkson, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, William B. Carey, Anke Ehrhardt, Bernice T. Eiduson, Nathan Fox, Joel A. Grinker, Marci J. Hanson, Michael Lewis, Hanus Papousek, Edward H. Plimpton, Henry N. Ricciutti, Halbert B. Robinson, Leonard A. Rosenblum, Stephanie Schaeffer, Arnold J. Sameroff, and Ursula Thunberg. MICHAEL LEWIS LEONARD A. ROSENBLUM Contents The Uncommon as the Common: A Relative View 1 MICHAEL LEWIS AND LEONARD A. ROSENBLUM 1 Traits, Environments, and Adaptation 2 GERSHON BERKSON 9 The Importance of Temperament-Environment Interaction 3 for Child Health and Development WILLIAM B. CAREY 31 The Uncommonly Bright Child 4 HALBERT B. ROBINSON 57 Down's Syndrome Children: Characteristics and Inter- S vention Research MARCI J. HANSON 83 Behavioral and Metabolic Factors in Childhood Obesity 6 JOEL A. GRINKER 115 Developmental Consequences of Malnutrition in Early 7 Childhood HENRY N. RICCIUTI 151 xi
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