Social-Equivalent Assessment/Evaluation Measure (SEAM), Research Edition

With this in-depth, easy-to-use tool, your program can reliably assess and monitor social-emotional development in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers at risk for delays or challenges. An ideal followup to screeners such as ASQ:SE, the two-part SEAM™ assessment reveals detailed qualitative information on children’s social-emotional competence— and identifies their caregivers’ strengths and areas of need. Easy to learn and implement, SEAM™ can be used by a wide variety of early childhood professionals, including those with little or no training in mental-health or behavioral interventions.

SEAM™ helps your program:

• support development of important social-emotional skills in order to minimize challenging behaviors
• build strong, proactive partnerships with families
• promote positive parent–child interactions in the critical first years of life
• assist with developing developmentally appropriate goals and intervention activities
• monitor child progress toward social-emotional goals
  

SEAM™ Tool

The main SEAM™ includes three intervals with different developmental ranges: Infant (2–18 months), Toddler (18–36 months), and Preschool (36–66 months). Each interval assesses 10 child benchmarks critical to social-emotional competence, including empathy, adaptive skills, self-image, emotional responses, and healthy interactions with others.

SEAM™ is flexible enough to meet your specific needs—parents/caregivers can complete it independently, or you can conduct it jointly with them if they need extra guidance. The SEAM™ system also includes SEAM™ with Ages, an alternate version of the tool annotated with a helpful list of age ranges for each item. This version makes it easy to give caregivers general guidance on how social-emotional skills typically develop and where their child’s development fits on the continuum.

SEAM™ Family Profile

The Family Profile assesses parent and caregiver strengths and helps identify areas in which they need more supports and resources to foster their child’s social-emotional skills. Like the main SEAM™, the Family Profile assessment includes three intervals—Infant, Toddler, and Preschool. Each interval measures four benchmarks key to a nurturing home environment: responding to needs, providing activities and play, providing predictable routines and an appropriate environment, and ensuring home safety.

List of SEAM™ benchmarks

1. Child participates in healthy interactions
2. Child expresses a range of emotions
3. Child regulates social-emotional responses
4. Child begins to show empathy for others
5. Child attends to and engages with others
6. Child explores hands and feet and surroundings (for infants)/demonstrates independence (for toddlers/preschoolers
7. Child displays a positive self-image
8. Child regulates activity level
9. Child cooperates with daily routines and requests
10. Child shows a range of adaptive skills