Excerpt
Excerpted from Chapter 1 and Chapter 6 of the
Manual for the Temperament and Atypical Behavior Scale By John T. Neisworth, Ph.D., Stephen J. Bagnato, Ed.D., N.C.S.P., John Salvia, D.Ed., and Frances M. Hunt, Ph.D.
©1999. Brookes Publishing. All Rights Reserved.
An Overview
Children may be declared eligible for early intervention services for several reasons. The major basis for eligibility determination and program planning is significant delay in developmental milestone attainment. A second basis for concern is the presence of unusual, atypical behaviors. Significant levels of atypical behavior can result in developmental delays as well as confront parents and other caregivers with management challenges.
Until the mid- to late 1990s, children who manifested behavior or temperament problems were served by psychiatrists or psychologists who typically conducted their assessments by clinical observation and parent interview. Today behavior problems are more readily recognized, and assessment relies on numerous checklists and rating scales for determining children's self-regulation, temperament, and behavior patterns. Unfortunately, few of these tools are designed to assess infants and young children, and those devices that do target this population frequently suffer from a lack of norms and limited reliabilities and validities.
The Temperament and Atypical Behavior Scale (TABS) was developed to provide a reliable and valid, norm-referenced, individually administered measure of dysfunctional behavior appropriately used with infants and young children between the ages of 11 and 71 months. In developing TABS, we were guided by our own research as well as research and professional opinion dealing with the assessment and diagnosis of early childhood behavior disorders. Temperament generally refers to one's characteristic emotional style or disposition. Extremes of temperament are often regarded as socioemotional disorders that can impede general development. We defined atypical behavior as conduct that is sufficiently aberrant to 1) signal problematic, dysfunctional development, or 2) threaten present or future development. Behaviors may be quite unusual in their own right regardless of age (e.g., makes strange throat noises), when compared with same-age peers (e.g., doesn't have a regular sleep schedule), or in terms of frequency or intensity (e.g., flaps hands over and over, consistently upset by changes in daily schedule). Atypical behaviors are commonly associated with a variety of syndromes and behavior disorders. As a norm-referenced scale, TABS is intended to identify children who are either developing atypically or are at risk for atypical development. In addition, when used for clinical purposes, TABS data can indicate specific areas of concern and can be the basis for planning early intervention programs for children and support programs for parents.
COMPONENTS
There are three components of TABS: the Screener, the Assessment Tool, and the TABS Manual.
TABS Screener
The 15-item Screener was designed for rapid identification of children who should receive more thorough, close-up assessment for developmental issues related to temperament and self-regulation. The Screener can provide documentation of atypical functioning. It can also be routinely included in developmental assessment programs or more general screening programs. Of course, children referred because of concerns related to atypical behaviors (rather than only delays) should be assessed with the full TABS Assessment Tool.
TABS Assessment Tool
The TABS Assessment Tool is a form containing a checklist of specific behaviors. Next to each behavior, there is a place for the respondent (usually one or both parents) to record whether the child in question exhibits the behavior and, if so, whether the parents need help with the behavior. In addition, there is space to document