A prospective longitudinal investigation related 76 maternal and infant variables to performance on the Metropolitan Readiness Tests (MRT) at age six. The 1,245 study subjects have been followed since birth. Their distribution on measures of intelligence and socioeconomic status is essentially normal. Subjects with high MRT scores were found to differ significantly from subjects with low MRT scores on 20 maternal and infant characteristics. Low readiness scores were found associated with higher total number of abnormalities at birth, more manifest abnormal skin conditions at birth, lower scores on measures of mental and motor development at 8 months and more neurological abnormalities at 1 year of age. Mothers of low readiness subjects were in general older, of lower socioeconomic status, and had had more pregnancies than mothers of high readiness subjects. When all 76 variables were used to predict readiness scores for the total sample, the resulting multiple correlation coefficient of .57 accounted for 33 percent of the variance in MRT scores. (Author/GO)