The Rural Appalachian Infant Temperament Project followed a group of 80 low-income rural Appalachian children from birth to kindergarten, focusing on two areas of child development: social/emotional functioning and cognitive skills. Subjects were recruited at a Lincoln County, West Virginia, clinic; all were white; and 73 percent had family incomes of less than $10,000. However, this group did not have high rates of other risk factors often associated with poverty. Child temperament, mother-child interaction, and variables in the contextual or caregiving environment were related to children's attachment relationships, behavior problems, language skills, and functioning in kindergarten. For the group, the most significant problematic outcome was language development: 1 month before kindergarten entry, the developmental level of the group's language skills was 1 year below actual age. This paper concludes that a child's development tends to be a function of how many risk and protective factors exist for the child and family over time, rather than the presence of any one predictor. Nevertheless, some measures did appear repeatedly as significant predictors of outcomes; these included mother's social support and marital stability, family's ability to function without welfare, presence of books in the home, various indicators of mother's sensitivity to child's needs and interests, child's reactivity as a newborn, and child's social behavior and coping skills. (Contains 16 references.) (Author/SV)