Abstract

Parental and peer socialization experiences provide crucial, formative inputs during infancy and early childhood, and by 6 years of age, the child’s brain develops into its full size; the brain’s basic connectivity architecture is laid out, both within and between 'regional' brain areas. Peer affiliation and play, in particular, are extremely important for learning reciprocity and other social and social-cognitive skills; unfortunately, there is a major disparity in the relative inattention to affiliation and play in infancy and early childhood by both society and science. Rather than simply focusing on the individual or peer group as the analytic unit, a complete understanding of human development implies consideration of its multiple contexts, starting with evolutionary history, passing through social dynamics and relationships, to arrive at social ecologies and cultural settings. More than ever, the interdisciplinary field of behavioral biology has great relevance for students of developmental science. Only through concerted effort can we hope to begin the gradual construction of a conceptual and empirical basis for exploring how 'qualitative differences in affiliative relationships and social roles in the stable peer group should be explored in relation to more traditional developmental assessments of individual status and competence'. Future ethological studies must necessarily expand their sociostructural consideration of group processes to include the network of affiliative relations within stable peer groups. Only such a balanced and open-minded approach to cohesive and dispersive activity will permit furthering our understanding of how the peer group may have an impact on children’s social adaptation.