Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment (ITSEA)

The ITSEA asks a parent or childcare provider about a very young child's emotional and social behavior — not just what is going wrong, but what is going right. Half the point of the instrument is that competence gets measured alongside problems.

A hundred and sixty-six items are each rated rarely, sometimes, or often, producing four domains and seventeen subscales. Externalizing covers activity and impulsivity, aggression and defiance, and peer aggression. Internalizing covers depression and withdrawal, general anxiety, separation distress, and inhibition to novelty. Dysregulation covers sleep, eating, negative emotionality, and sensory sensitivity. Competence covers compliance, attention, imitation and play, mastery motivation, empathy, and prosocial peer relations. It is for children 12 to 36 months.

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Learn More: Beyond the four domains, the ITSEA yields three clusters flagging atypical behaviour — Maladaptive, Social Relatedness, and Atypical — that are often the ones most relevant when autism is a question. Parallel parent and childcare provider forms exist, and norms.