K – Assessment KIT 

T. Berry Brazelton may not have been the first researcher or clinician to realize that newborn babies were more competent than had been acknowledged, he played a central — if not the central — role in changing conventional perceptions of the newborn among researchers, practitioners, and parents around the world. 

The Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS), which he developed in 1973, opened the door to a whole generation of clinicians, researchers, and parents to enable them to discover and acknowledge the human newborn as a person. It is best described as a neurobehavioral assessment scale, designed to describe the newborn’s responses to their new extrauterine environment and to document the contribution of the newborn infant to the development of the emerging parent-child relationship. 

When the Scale was published in the early 1970s, people were just beginning to appreciate the infant’s full breadth of capabilities, and the only tests available were designed to detect abnormalities. The Scale was designed to go further, by revealing the infant’s strengths and range of individuality, while still providing a health screen. 

The NBAS is based on several key assumptions. First, infants, even ones that seem vulnerable, are highly capable when they are born. “A newborn already has nine months of experience when she is born,” Dr. Brazelton said. “She is capable of controlling her behavior in order to respond to her new environment.”

Second, babies “communicate” through their behavior, which, although it may not always seem like it, is a rational language. Not only do infants respond to cues around them, like their parents’ faces, but they also take steps to control their environment, such as crying to get a response from their caregivers. 

Third, infants are social organisms, individuals with their own unique qualities, ready to shape as well as be shaped by the caregiving environment.