Authors:
Stanley Greenspan, Georgia DeGangi and Serena Wieder
Publisher:
The Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning
Disorders
www.icdl.com
Initial Material Cost:
Text Book: $40 for ICDL members, $47 for non-members
Additional protocol booklets: $8
Representativeness of Norming Sample:
None described.
Languages:
English
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Type of
Assessment:
Direct observation and possible direct child assessment
Age Range and Administration Interval:
7 months to 4 years (research version); Six versions: 7-9
months; 10-12 months; 13-18 months; 19-24 months; 25-35 months;
3-4 years
Personnel, Training, Administration,
and Scoring Requirements:
Takes 15-20 minutes to administer. The examiner should be
trained and experienced. The authors recommend videotaping
the caregiver-child play interaction session. They advise
that live scoring should not be attempted without first observing
at least 10 videotapes with at least an 80 percent reliability
in scoring live and videotaped observations.
Summary
Initial Material Cost: 1 (> $100)
Reliability: 3 (.65 or higher for inter-rater reliability;
no other reliability provided)
Validity: 2 (|.5 for concurrent)
Norming Sample Characteristics: 1 (none described)
Ease of Administration and Scoring: 3 (administered and scored
by a highly trained individual)
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Description: The Functional
Emotional Assessment Scale (FEAS) provides a framework for
observing and assessing a child’s emotional and social
functioning in the context of the relationship with his or
her caregiver as well as the caregiver’s capacity to
support the child’s emotional development. The FEAS
assesses the child on six levels of social and emotional development:
(1) regulation and interest in the world, (2) forming relationships
(attachment), (3) intentional two-way communications, (4)
development of a complex sense of self, (5) representational
capacity and elaboration of symbolic thinking, and (6) emotional
thinking or development and expression of thematic play. There
are two versions of the FEAS, a clinical version and a research
version. The research FEAS, which evolved from the clinical
FEAS, has cutoff scores to assist in interpreting the results
and has been used to test for the scale’s validity and
reliability. Each of these has versions that are designed
for different age groups. In both versions, the caregiver
(parent) is asked to play with his or her child as he/she
might at home for 15 minutes with 3 different types of developmentally
appropriate toys: symbolic toys, tactile toys, and toys involving
large movement activities. The examiner may also want to engage
the child in play to attempt to elicit behaviors not observed
during the caregiver-child play interaction. Because considerable
experience is needed to score the FEAS reliably in live observation
sessions, the authors recommend that these unstructured play
observations be videotaped and scored later. The scale should
be used in conjunction with other instruments as part of an
overall assessment.
Uses of Information: The FEAS
is intended to help clinicians identify critical areas deserving
of further clinical inquiry. It can be used descriptively
to profile children’s emotional, social, and related
developmental capacities. It can also be used to diagnosis
or screen for problems in children who are experiencing regulatory
disorders, but not to formally diagnose specific disorders.
Reliability: (1) Inter-rater
reliability (Cronbach’s alpha): The alpha coefficients
between pairs of observers viewing between 15 and 46 videotaped
caregiver-child interactions ranged from .90 to .92 for the
caregiver scale and .90 to .98 for the child scale. The alphas
between a pair of observers viewing 15 interactions, one coding
the interactions live and the other a videotape of the interactions,
were .83 for the caregiver scale and .89 for the child scale.
Validity: Four non-nationally
representative samples of young children between the ages
of 7 and 48 months, except when noted otherwise, were used
to test for validity: (1) 197 normal children; (2) 190 children
with regulatory disorder; (3) 41 children between the ages
of 19 and 48 months with pervasive developmental disorder;
and (4) 40 multi-problem children. All of the samples had
a larger proportion of boys, white, and middle-class children.
(1) Construct validity:
The scores obtained by normative and clinical samples of young
children were compared using a discrimination index, t-tests,
and analysis of variance. (2) Accuracy of cutoff scores (ranges
for the different age groups): False normal errors for the
total (child and caregiver) scale ranged from 5 to 28 percent,
false delay errors ranged from 26 to 63 percent, specificity
(probability correctly identifying a normal child) ranged
from 37 to 74 percent, and sensitivity (probability of correctly
identifying a delayed child) ranged from 74 to 95 percent.
(3) Concurrent: Intercorrelations between the FEAS scores
during symbolic and tactile play and two other instruments
developed by the authors, the Test of Sensory Functions in
Infants and the Test of Attention in Infants, were not significant.
The authors interpret this to mean that the FEAS provides
unique information.
Method of Scoring: The clinical
FEAS may be left unscored and used to provide a descriptive
profile of the young child’s developmental capacities
or to help systematize clinical thinking. The scale can also
be used to rank each item as follows: capacity not present
(0), capacity fleetingly present (1), capacity intermittently
present (2), capacity present most of the time (3), capacity
present all of the time in all circumstances (4), or no opportunity
to observe capacity (not applicable). The ratings can then
be summed for each functioning area and divided by the functioning
area’s maximum possible score to obtain a percentage.
However, only some of the developmental functioning areas
can be described quantitatively; the others should be described
qualitatively. The research FEAS rates both the caregiver
and the child on their mastery of the skill as follows: behavior
is not seen or is observed only briefly (skill not mastered)
(0), behavior is present some of the time or observed several
times (skill partially mastered) (1), and behavior is consistently
observed or observed many times (skill mastered) (2). The
ratings can be summed to obtain category and subtest scores
for the caregiver and category and subtest scores for the
child, as well as a combined caregiver total score and a combined
child total score.
Interpretability: A developmental
growth chart can be used to help assess the child’s
functional developmental accomplishments over time based on
information collected from the clinical FEAS. The research
FEAS has cut-off scores that can be used to determine if parent-child
interaction patterns are normal, at risk, or deficient. However,
in interpreting both the clinical and research FEAS, the authors
strongly recommend that the FEAS not be used alone, but as
part of a comprehensive assessment of the caregiver-child
relationship.
Training Support: The author offers
a training course for the FEAS. Information can be acquired
by calling 301-320-6360 or by visiting www.icdl.com
Adaptations/Special Instructions for
Individuals with Disabilities: None described.
Report Preparation Support: None
described.
References:
DeGangi, G. Pediatric Disorders of Regulation in Affect and
Behavior. A Therapist’s Guide to Assessment and Treatment.
San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2000.
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