In closing, the present research reaffirms the organizational-developmental principle that individual functioning is best understood as a product of one's developmental history in combination with later life events. The consequence of the quality of early interpersonal experiences on later anxious-depressed symptoms depends in part on the quality of young adult romantic relationships. Such findings contribute to our understanding of the legacy of early experience (Sroufe et al., 1990), and stimulate new avenues for research on the mechanisms underlying these effects.
