Experiences in prenatal life and early childhood that may cause personality disorders or criminal behavior in later life are examined in these proceedings of the Subcommittee on Childhood Experience as Causes of Criminal Behavior of the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Science. This issue, the twelveth in a series of 19 hearings dating from November 1977 to July 1978, presents the testimony of Dr. Donna K. Kontos, who gives views and empirical findings on the subject of bonding, or attachment behavior, between mothers and their infants. Bowlby's ethological and psychoanalytic theory of attachment is summarized and recent research is reviewed. Kontos' thesis is that the infant's developmental processes are interlocked with interpersonal interaction. Artificial methods of rearing may fail to support other aspects of development and hence result in developmental anomalies. A baby's attachment behavior is adapted to an environment containing a responsive mother figure. It is certain that gross deficiences of social development may result from rearing conditions that depart too greatly from those characteristics of the environment of original evolutionary adaptedness. Dr. Kontos' research indicated that separating mothers and their newborns in the early post-partum hours and days does diminish attachment behavior in the mothers. Questions of committee members probe related issues' Both English and French texts are provided. (Author/RH)