Conducting a Culturally Informed Neuropsychological Evaluation

Clinical neuropsychologists can encounter various challenges when conducting a cross-cultural evaluation. This book offers practical advice for developing a cultural context to better understand clients and reduce assessment bias, enhance test validity, and optimize treatment recommendations.

When conducting a neuropsychological evaluation, the clinician must develop a contextual knowledge base to fully understand a client’s current functioning. Doing so can be especially challenging when the client’s cultural background differs from that of the evaluator. This book helps neuropsychologists enhance their cultural competency, avoid biased assessments, and optimize outcomes for culturally different clients. The author describes strategies for improving communication, selecting valid tests, interpreting results, estimating premorbid functioning, working with translators, and making effective treatment recommendations.

Daryl Fujii, PhD, ABPP-CN, is a staff neuropsychologist at the Veterans Affairs Pacific Island Health Care Services Community Living Center and adjunct faculty for the Department of Psychiatry, University of Hawaii. He received his PhD from the University of Wyoming in 1991, interned at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific.
 
Dr. Fujii earned his diplomate in clinical neuropsychology from the American Board of Professional Psychology in 1999 and was elected to fellow status of APA in 2006.
 
His research interests include cross-cultural neuropsychology, schizophrenia, geriatrics, secondary psychosis, and psychosis secondary to traumatic brain injury, for which he is an international forensic consultant. He has more than 50 publications, including two edited books: The Spectrum of Psychotic Disorders: Neurobiology, Etiology, and Pathogenesis (2007) and The Neuropsychology of Asian-Americans (2011).
 
Dr. Fujii is currently a co-chair of the national VA Psychology Training Committee, Multicultural Diversity Committee and chair of the VA Pacific Island Health Care Services and VA Central California Health Care System.