Assessment of Young Children With Special Needs

Those concerned with the teaching of young handicapped children are being bombarded by conflicting messages from a variety of professional fields. The growing national priority on early identification, screening, diagnosis, and treatment has emphasized the need for more intensive and specific diagnostic or assessment procedures, at earlier and earlier ages. Investigators in pediatrics, neonatology, psychology, and education are trying to define the variables in each of the developmental areas that will reliably identify the instructional needs of children who need intervention in the early months or years of life. New assessment devices are appearing in large numbers, to augment the sizable number of standardized tests suitable for the early childhood population.