Abstract: Developmental behavioural genetics is an interdisciplinary field emerging in 1980s that attempts to explore genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in behavioral development. There are some distinctions in the object, design and content of research between developmental behavioral genetics and behavioral genetics. The research of developmental behavioral genetics should use a combination of psychological measurement and behavioral genetics approaches, which are consisted of quantitative genetics methods and molecular genetics methods. The future research should broaden and deepen the investigation of associations among candidate genes and behavior, and focus on examining the mechanism of gene-environment interaction and gene-environment correlation.

Key words: developmental behavioural genetics, quantitative genetics, molecular genetics