Assessment of Young Developmentally Disabled Children Perspectives in Developmental Psychology Series Editor: Michael Lewis Rutgers Medical School University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey New Brunswick, New Jersey ASSESSMENT OF YOUNG DEVELOPMENT ALL Y DISABLED CHILDREN Edited by Theodore D. Wachs and Robert Sheehan COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENTAL AND CHILD PSYCHOTHERAPY Edited by Stephen R. Shirk THE DIFFERENT FACES OF MOTHERHOOD Edited by Beverly Birns and Dale Hay FATHERING BEHAVIORS The Dynamics of the Man-Child Bond Wade C. Mackey PSYCHOLOGY OF DEVELOPMENT AND HISTORY Edited by Klaus F. Riegel SOCIAL AND PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT An Evolutionary Synthesis Kevin B. MacDonald Assessment of Young Developmentally Disabled Children Edited by Theodore D. Wachs Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana and Robert Sheehan Cleveland State University Cleveland. Ohio Springer Science +B usiness Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Assessment of young developmentally disabled children / edited by Theodore D. Wachs and Robert Sheehan. p. cm. — (Perspectives in developmental psychology) Includes bibliographies and indexes. ISBN 978-1-4757-9308-6 ISBN 978-1-4757-9306-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-9306-2 1. Developmentally disabled children. I. Wachs, Theodore, 1941- . II. Sheehan, Robert, 1951- . III. Series. RJ135.A85 1988 618.92/8588 -dcl9 88-2966 CIP © 1988 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1988 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1998 All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher Contributors Donald B. Bailey, Jr . • School of Education and FAMILIES Project, Carolina Institute for Research on Early Education of the Handicapped, Frank Porter Graham Child Developmental Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Barbara A. Bain • Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana Kathryn Barnard· Department of Parent-Child Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Patricia Brandt· Department of Parent-Child Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Lois M. Brockman • Department of Family Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada D. Cech • Department of Physical Therapy, Chicago Medical School, North Chicago, Illinois Carl J. Dunst • Family, Infant, and Preschool Program, and the Human Development Research and Training Institute, Western Carolina Center, Morgantown, North Carolina Nancy Fieber· Meyer Children's Rehabilitation Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska R. J. Gallagher· Department of Early Childhood Special Education, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio Kathleen Gradel· Department of Special Education, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Robert}. Harmon • Division of Child Psychiatry, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver, Colorado Robert}. Hoffmeister· Center for the Study of Communication and Deafness, School of Education, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts Nancy C. Hubert· Sparks Center for Developmental and Learning Disorders, and the Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama James V. Kahn • Department of Special Education, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois Diane Magyary • Department of Parent-Child Nursing, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Sean C. McDevitt· Western Behavioral Associates, Inc., 367 N. 21st Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona v vi CONTRIBUTORS R. A. McWilliam • Family, Infant, and Preschool Pr6gram, and the Human Develop ment Research and Training Institute, Western Carolina Center, Morgantown, North Carolina George A. Morgan • Human Development and Family Studies, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado Lesley B. Olswang • Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington Michael D. Orlansky • College of Education, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio Cordelia Robinson • Meyer Children's Rehabilitation Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska Robert Sheehan· Department of Foundation and Curriculum, College of Education, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio Rune}. Simeonsson • School of Education and FAMILIES Project, Carolina Institute for Research on Early Education of the Handicapped, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Vaughan Stagg • Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University in Shreveport, Shreveport, Louisiana Theodore D. Wachs • Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana Jan L. Wallander • Sparks Center for Developmental and Learning Disorders, and the Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama Sidney S. Zentall • Department of Special Education, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana Preface Our knowledge of the cognitive and social-emotional functioning of developmentally disabled infants and preschoolers derives, in large part, from our assessment of such children. This book has been developed to familiarize readers with the characteristics of developmentally disabled children, and to introduce to readers aspects of measurement that are of relevance to the assessment of atypical infants and preschoolers. The book has been developed with clinicians and prospective clinicians in mind. These are individuals who are committed to the care and education of developmentally disabled infants and preschoolers and the families of those children. The book has thus been written to provide support for the use of assessment data in planning early interven tion programs. Of special note in the development of this edited book is that it is divided into four major parts with interrelated chapters in each part. The authors of chapters in Parts II and III had access to the chapters in Part I before writing their chapters. The summary chap ters found in Part IV were similarly written by authors having access to all chapters in Parts I-III. This approach to the development of an edited book was chosen as a way of ensuring an integration of major concepts throughout the book. This process is also a reflection of our belief that assessment is an interdisciplinary process, involving the syn thesis of a number of diverse interests. Part I of this book introduces the assessment process. In this section, we identify issues of development and measurement that are of particular relevance to all types of handicapped infants and preschoolers. Wachs and Sheehan provide an overview of the cognitive and socioemotional development of young developmentally disabled children, identifying many of the knowns and unknowns of development for this population. Sim eonsson and Bailey discuss essential elements of the assessment process, including child variables, intervention variables, and outcome variables. Hubert and Wallander then ar ticulate a model of instrument selection for the assessment of developmentally disabled infants and preschoolers. Stagg continues this theme by discussing clinical considerations in the assessment of young developmentally disabled children. In the last chapter in Part I, Sheehan analyzes numerous studies comparing parental and professional agreement in early childhood assessment and suggests a model for the involvement of parents in assessment. Part II of the text, "Cognitive Assessment," includes six chapters discussing the specifics of infant and preschool cognitive assessment with various groups of hand- vii viii PREFACE icapped infants and preschoolers. These groups include blind and visually impaired chil dren, deaf and hard-of-hearing children, motorically impaired children, mentally retarded children, children with severe behavioral disorders, and multiply handicapped children. Part III of the text, "Noncognitive Assessment," includes chapters dealing with the assessment of motoric behavior, the assessment of temperament, the assessment of mo tivation, the assessment of language, and environmental and biophysical assessment of developmentally disabled infants and preschoolers. Part IV of the text is designed to guide links from assessment to treatment. The overview chapters in this final part emphasize the use of assessment data in intervention programs for handicapped children. THE NATURE OF DEVELOPMENTAL ASSESSMENT Definition Any discussion of the assessment of development must begin with a definition of the term assessment. We define assessment as systematic, purposeful data-collection. Fur ther, in this book, we restrict our use of the term development to psychological develop ment. Rather than narrowly restricting our concept of psychological development to cognitive parameters, we prefer to operate within a competence model, including all those behavioral and intra- and interindividual factors that relate to the child's ability to deal effectively with his or her environment. Within this framework, the assessment of early development means the systematic, purposeful collection of data, reflecting both patterns of children's emergent abilities to comprehend and function in their environment and the factors associated with the emergence of these patterns. The Role of Assessing Development in Our Culture Historically, the emphasis in developmental assessment has been on describing cur rent cognitive functioning and on predicting subsequent cognitive development. One as sumption underlying the first usage is that a developmental test is necessary to confirm developmental delay. All too often, this is not the case. We have witnessed numerous efforts of clinicians to derive a scorable intelligence measure on the McCarthy scales for severely handicapped 6-year-olds. When asked why the test was being used, the answer is typically "To confirm developmental delay." Similarly, we have seen examples of clinicians who have been confronted with an infant whose performance on the Bayley scales was so low that the test did not yield a scorable index (a score indicating a norm group reference). These assessors have then attempted to derive an index score by divid ing the infant's developmental age score (DA) by chronological age (CA) and multiplying by 100 (DAICA + 100 = Developmental quotient [DQD. When asked why a DQ below 50 was needed, the answer was "To confirm developmental delay. " Clearly, in these types of situations, the test only confirms the obvious. In terms of the predictive function, although at least moderate continuity of perfor mance is found between infant and childhood cognitive assessment (Bomstein & Sigman, 1986), we do not view the predictive function as necessarily primary for two reasons. PREFACE ix First, any type of mass cognitive screening would not be cost-effective as a means of detecting that small percentage of infants who would be truly at developmental risk. Second, as will be emphasized in this book, it is becoming increasingly clear that, to have the potential of predicting risk for children who are not obviously delayed, a multidimen sional approach is necessary. A multidimensional approach involves the use of cogni tive, biomedical, motivational, and environmental assessments. Given the above, we view early assessment as more valid when used as a descriptive and prescriptive procedure. By descriptive and prescriptive, we mean using assessments that provide us with competence profiles for young children designated as being at risk. These profiles can be used to make decisions about which children need intervention, and to design the most effective intervention strategy for each child. The descriptive-prescrip tive approach is seen as valid regardless of what specific assessment strategy is used (e.g., norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, or test adaptation). The use of early assessment in a descriptive-prescriptive strategy is congruent with recent changes in our culture's attitudes toward handicapped infants and preschoolers. This change, though not widespread until the 1970s, was toward the provision of reme dial educational services for infants and preschoolers who had been diagnosed as dis abled. Previously, these children had received custodial care until they were of school age. However, the long-term consequences of severe early-childhood disability and the disadvantages of purely custodial care have become increasingly evident (Tjossem, 1976). The early intervention efforts for disadvantaged preschoolers (e.g., Head Start), begun in the 1960s, began to be directed toward young handicapped children with the Federal funding of P.L. 90-538, the Handicapped Children's Early Education Program (HCEEP). The HCEEP models began funding in 1969, with the first three-year models being completed by 1972. Each of these models specified the entrance criteria for infants and children, using developmental data to support such decisions. As the models were in tended to be replicated throughout the country and, as a consequence, had to be clearly explicated in rationale and practice, assessment data were also used to make program ming decisions for children (in developing and modifying individual educational plans, or IEPs) and were also used to assess the efficacy of interventions. By the 1970s, therefore, two mandated purposes for early childhood assessment had evolved: assessment for pro gram planning and assessment for program evaluation. What has emerged from the above is an emphasis on the relevance of assessment data to clinical work with developmentally disabled populations. The question, then, becomes one of what types of assessment data, for what purposes, and for what popula tions. It is this question that this book was designed to answer. REFERENCES Bomstein, M., & Sigman, M. (1986). Continuity in mental development from infancy. Child Development, 57, 251-274. Tjossem, T. (1976). Intervention strategies for high risk infants and young children. Baltimore: University Park Press.