Harcourt Assessment Introduces Third Edition Of Bayley Scales Of Infant And Toddler Development

New Bayley-III Assesses All Five Developmental Areas Required By Federal Law and Includes Parent and Caregiver bservations to Assess the Whole Child

07 November 2005

SAN ANTONIO – Leading test developer and publisher Harcourt Assessment, Inc. has launched the third edition of its Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley-III).

Published under Harcourt’s PsychCorp™ brand, the new Bayley-III assesses all five developmental areas required by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) -- cognitive, motor, language, social-emotional and adaptive behavior.

Bayley-III is designed to measure the strengths and abilities of children as young as one month up to age 42 months. It uses playful activities and engaging toys to help early childhood specialists, child development specialists, school psychologists and other professionals determine if a child is developing normally or might have a developmental delay.

The Bayley Scales were first introduced more than two decades ago by renowned psychologist Nancy Bayley and included assessments of cognitive ability, motor skills and language. The new Bayley-III includes updated versions of those assessments and incorporates assessments for the two additional developmental areas now required by federal law -- social-emotional and adaptive behavior.

While the cognitive, motor and language assessments are administered by a professional who interacts with the child, the social-emotional and adaptive behavior assessments are questionnaires that parents or caregivers complete based on their day-to-day observation of the child's behavior.

"When assessing the development of young children, the more information we can gather the better, so parent or caregiver input is extremely important,"

said Larry Weiss, Harcourt's vice president of psychological assessment products.

"Bayley-III combines the observations of trained clinicians with those of people who have daily contact with the child. This gives us a very rich collection of information that enables us to understand and assess the whole child,"

Weiss added.

Bayley-III measures cognitive development using age-appropriate activities such as counting, puzzle completion, matching colors and pretend play.

It evaluates fine motor skills, such as visual tracking, reaching and grasping, as well as gross motor skills, such as sitting, crawling, standing, jumping, and walking up and down stairs.

In the area of language, Bayley-III assesses the development of communication skills such as babbling, gesturing, naming objects, vocabulary, and the use of plurals and verb tense.

The new Bayley-III adaptive behavior assessment was developed by Patti L. Harrison, Ph.D., and Thomas Oakland, Ph.D., the authors of the Adaptive Behavior Assessment System® - Second Edition (ABAS® -II), also published by Harcourt Assessment. It includes questions about a child's communication, home living, self-direction and other topics.

The Bayley-III social-emotional assessment was developed by Stanley Greenspan, M.D., one of the world's leading experts in child development, and is based on his Social-Emotional Growth Chart, also published by Harcourt Assessment. The parent or caregiver answers questions about how a child uses all capacities to meet needs, deal with feelings, think and communicate.

Harcourt also offers the abbreviated Bayley-III Screening Test that uses selected items from the full Bayley-III. Designed to be administered in just 15 to 25 minutes, professionals can use the screening test to assess cognitive, language and motor development and determine quickly if a child is developing at the right pace or might need a more comprehensive assessment.

The Bayley-III also comes with an optional PDA-based scoring assistant that makes it easier for professionals to record their observations of the child's cognitive, motor and language development.

Based in San Antonio, Harcourt Assessment is a leading provider of high-quality assessment instruments and testing programs used by educators, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, human resource professionals, admissions and credentialing professionals, and businesses.

Through the development of custom statewide educational testing programs, Harcourt is helping more than 20 states meet the accountability requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The company is a unit of Harcourt Education, which is the global education brand of Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: RUK and ENL). Reed Elsevier is a world-leading publisher and information provider operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business industry sectors.