ISIC 2022 was an ideal moment to display the early materials alongside contemporary work.

It was the first major opportunity, after the disruption of the pandemic years, to bring the global ASI community back together in one place and reconnect the field’s roots with its current direction. Placing historic clinic artefacts and early test materials beside current assessment and research developments made a clear professional point: this is a continuous programme of refinement, not a break from the foundations.

That kind of side-by-side display also supported practice in a very practical way:

• it helped delegates see the lineage from early test development through SIPT and into today’s assessment research
• it reinforced fidelity by showing what has stayed consistent in intent and method, even as tools and psychometrics have advanced
• it positioned newer work as building on the field’s accumulated learning, rather than replacing it

ISIC 2022 provided the right setting to present the field’s origins alongside contemporary assessment and research, showing continuity, development, and fidelity from early test work to current programmes.

From SCSIT and SIPT to EASI: contribution to practice

Early standardised test development in Ayres Sensory Integration began with the Southern California Sensory Integration Tests (SCSIT). This programme established the feasibility of structured test items to examine sensory integration and praxis patterns, supporting more consistent clinical reasoning beyond informal observation.

The Sensory Integration and Praxis Tests (SIPT) then provided a fully standardised battery with defined administration procedures and normative data. SIPT enabled clinicians and researchers to describe patterns of sensory integration and praxis difficulty with greater reliability, improving communication within teams, supporting service development, and strengthening the evidence base through more comparable assessment data.

EASI (Evaluation in Ayres Sensory Integration) represents the next generation of assessment research and development. It aims to update test items, strengthen psychometrics, and expand norms across countries and cultures. In practice terms, EASI increases the potential for equitable access to standardised assessment, supports clearer pattern identification across diverse populations, and strengthens the link between assessment findings and intervention planning aligned to fidelity in Ayres Sensory Integration.

Key practice impact across the timeline
• Increased standardisation and reliability in assessment procedures
• Improved pattern-based clinical reasoning for sensory integration and praxis
• Stronger shared language for multidisciplinary communication and commissioning
• More robust research comparability, with modern psychometrics and broader norming ambitions
• Better support for equitable assessment across cultures and contexts, while maintaining fidelity principles