Infancy is one of the most fascinating periods in the human life cycle. In two short years, infants become thinking, speaking, social beings. As this book explains, over the past three decades, researchers and clinicians have developed an array of assessment methods for measuring infant development and diagnosing infants with developmental delays.The field of infant assessment has broadened from a major focus on cognitive development to an emphasis on parent-infant interaction, play assessment, and newer strategies that involve naturalistic observations. Because of the need to look at the whole infant, assessment often involves multiple disciplines. The interdisciplinary approach measures the infant domains of motor skills, cognitive abilities, and language acquisition and evaluates the infant's psychosocial environment.The chapters in this volume provide a solid overview of the current trends in infant assessment measures and procedures. The book can be used in undergraduate and graduate infant development courses and for advanced courses in infant assessment.

The legislative, technological, and philosophical changes of the last decade have altered the provision of intervention to school-age children with speech and language impairments. This book provides a comprehensive overview of these advances and an in-depth examination of the effectiveness of these developments. Topics covered include the different types of communication problems encountered by school-age children and how these problems affect their educational development; the latest innovations in intervention and service delivery; and a vast range of intervention issues, from the use of computers to the importance of cultural awareness. An essential resource for speech-language pathologists, special educators, reading specialists, researchers, clinicians, and students in speech-language pathology and child development.

A groundbreaking neuroscientific understanding of infant and child development, including a CD-ROM with supplementary worksheets, figures and tables. When early interventions with children fail, clinicians wonder: How could things have been different? The answers seem obvious at first, but a little reflection begins to unveil just how complicated this question really is. Who should have been included in the treatment? With what professionals and using what approaches? When should intervention have occurred? Each question involves a spectrum of both personal and societal issues, which is perhaps why problems that are so widely acknowledged remain so widely ignored. Often, a family is not aware that their story could have had a different ending. So, in response to the critical need for a more cohesive system of care for our youngest patients, this book presents a conceptual framework for interdisciplinary collaboration. Examining the issues of infant mental health and early intervention from a brain-based perspective—one that cuts across all domains—addresses the need for individual practitioners to incorporate the whole picture in relation to their part in assessing and intervening with each individual child and parent, and provides a global framework for team collaboration.

The Handbook of Infant, Toddler, and Preschool Mental Health Assessment brings together, for the first time, leading clinical researchers to provide empirically based recommendations for assessment of social-emotional and behavior problems and disorders in the earliest years. Each author presents state-of-the-art information on scientifically valid, developmentally based clinical assessments and makes recommendations based on the integration of developmental theory, empirical findings, and clinical experience. Though the field of mental health assessment in infants and young children lags behind work with older children and adults, recent scientific advances, including new measures and diagnostic approaches, have led to dramatic growth in the field. The editors of this exciting new work have assembled an extraordinary collection of chapters that thoroughly discuss the conceptualizations of dysfunction in infants and young children, current and new diagnostic criteria, and such specific disorders as sensory modulation dysfunction, sleep disorders, eating and feeding disorders, autistic spectrum disorders, anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder, and ADHD. Chapters further highlight the importance of incorporating contextual factors such as parent-child relationship functioning and cultural background into the assessment process to increase the validity of findings. Given the comprehensiveness of this groundbreaking volume in reviewing conceptual, methodological, and research advances on early identification, diagnosis, and clinical assessment of disorders in this young age group, it will be an ideal resource for teachers, researchers, and a wide variety clinicians including child psychologists, child psychiatrists, early intervention providers, early special educators, social workers, family physicians, and pediatricians.

Adaptive Behavior Assessment System-II summarizes information on adaptive behavior and skills as well as general issues in adaptive behavior assessment with the goal of promoting sound assessment practice during uses, interpretations, and applications of the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System-II. Adaptive behavior and skills refer to personal qualities associated with the ability to meet one’s personal needs such as communication, self-care, socialization, etc. and those of others. Data from measures of adaptive behavior have been used most commonly in assessment and intervention services for persons with mental retardation. However, the display of adaptive behaviors and skills is relevant to all persons. The Adaptive Behavior Assessment System-II (ABAS-II) provides a comprehensive, norm-referenced assessment of the adaptive behavior and skills of individuals from birth through age 89. The comprehensive natures of the ABAS-II, ease in administration and scoring, and wide age range have resulted in its widespread use for a large number of assessment purposes. The book provides practical information and thus serves as a valuable resource for those who use the ABAS-II. Assists in the functional use of the ABAS-II Provides case studies illustrating use of the ABAS-II in comprehensive assessment and intervention planning Reviews scholarship on adaptive behaviors and skills Describes legal, ethical, and other professional standards and guidelines that apply to the use of the ABAS-II and other measures of adaptive behavior Discusses the use of the ABAS-II with autism, mental retardation; young children and those in elementary and secondary school; as well as incarcerated persons being evaluated for possible mental retardation