It is always enlightening to inquire about the origins of a research en-
deavor or a particular theoretical approach. Beginning with the observa-
tion of the mental life of the infant in 1962, Michael Lewis has
contrib- uted to the change in the view of the infant as an insensate
mass of confusion to a complex and intellectual being. Anyone fortunate
enough to have participated in the infancy research of the 1960s knows
how exciting it was to have discovered in this small creature such a
full and complex organism. More central to the origins of this work was
the perception of the infant as an interactive, not a reactive,
organism, and as one who influenced its social environment and
constructed its cogni- tive life, not one who just passively received
information. Other areas of psychology had already begun to
conceptualize the organism as active and interactive, even while
developmental psychologists still clung to either simple learning
paradigms, social reinforcement theories, or reflex- ive theories. Even
though Piaget had proposed an elaborate interactive theory, it was not
until the late 1960s that his beliefs were fully im- plemented into
developmental theory and practice. A concurrent trend was the increase
of concern with mother-infant interactions (Ainsworth, 1969; Bowlby,
1969; Goldberg & Lewis, 1969; Lewis & Goldberg, 1969) which provided the
impetus for the study of social and emotional as well as cognitive
development.