An historical perspective on behavioral teratology

Behavioral Teratology as it exists today is viewed as having developed from the combination of theory and test methods from Developmental Psychology with the principles of morphological examination and an orientation toward public health issues from Teratology. In the recent past, the search for useful screening methods for safety evaluation has used two basic strategies: (1) having tests chosen by the consensus of experts in the field or through surveys of tests actually used in Behavioral Teratology; and (2) exploring the utility of test procedures in small, informal interlaboratory reliability studies. Neither of these approaches succeeded in identifying appropriate screening methods; rather, these attempts have made clear the need for research efforts specifically directed at test selection and interlaboratory reliability.