The effects of gene-environment correlation may also differ across development. Passive gene-environment correlation would be expected to play the largest role early in development when children are still located in the home environment. As children mature, they have increasing autonomy to select experiences based on their genetically influenced dispositions and a greater variety of possible environments from which to select experiences (Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Therefore, patterns of active and evocative gene-environment correlation would be expected to manifest in increasing heritability and, if they are recurrent or lasting, increasing stability of genetic effects with age. Proponents of developmental models based on gene-environment correlation (e.g., Dickens & Flynn, 2001) argue that environments encountered by happenstance are far less likely to recur with sufficient enough frequency to have prominent effects on psychological development. Alternatively, environments systematically selected and evoked on the basis of gene-environment correlation are likely to recur routinely, such that their effects on psychological development are pronounced. Thus, the stability of nonshared environmental effects on personality, which only includes effects of environmental experiences that are not systematically related to genotype,
