This book reports the first attempt in the child development literature to examine the structure of early personality based on parents' free-descriptions of their children. It is an important piece of research because of its cross-national focus on personality development.

The authors present a data set that reveals considerable consistency in the parental descriptions of child personality in both western and nonwestern countries. This consistency supports the cultural universality of the "Big Five" personality factors. The authors' findings lay the foundation for an examination of how...

Although the importance of context has been emphasized by temperament researchers, until now there has been remarkably little systematic research on the unique role specific aspects of context play in the development and impact of temperament. The goal of this volume is to systematize current knowledge and theory on the role played by specific aspects of context in the etiology, expression, and influence of temperament, particularly for those aspects of temperament that are most likely to relate to later personality traits. Reflecting the editors' view that the interface between temperament...

Jean Piaget, renowned Swiss developmental psychologist and epistemologist, is best known for his groundbreaking studies with children, which led him to develop a landmark theory of cognitive development. Geldolph A. Kohnstamm's Jean Piaget: Children and the Inclusion Problem is a critical study of a cornerstone of Piaget's theory. This theory holds that a child's ability to solve problems of class inclusion marks the beginning of the period of concrete (logical) operations at about seven or eight years of age. Kohnstamm's experiments show, however, that with directive teaching methods, most...