As the population across the United States continues to change and grow in diversity, this book enters the body of literature in a timely manner, given the lack of textbooks focusing on this topic. In many parts of the United States, it is a luxury to be able to refer a client to a neuropsychologist who is of similar ethnic background and is fluent in the patient's native language. However, the reality is that many neuropsychologists assess individuals from various Asian descents and will need to be knowledgeable regarding the use of appropriate assessment tools in order to accurately interpret the results and provide relevant recommendations. The main focus of the book is to provide a practical resource to neuropsychologist to assist in providing culturally informed neuropsychological evaluations.

The book is organized by ethnic groups including Americans of Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Asian Indian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese origin. Each chapter provides a brief but thorough historical cultural context that allows a clinician to have a deeper understanding of the major events that have shaped the collective worldview of that particular ethnic group. For example, the mental health effects of the Cambodian genocide would be important to understand when assessing an individual who may have immigrated to the United States after 1980 as a refugee because of the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder within this population. Although this information may be derived from general clinical psychology textbooks, specific applications to neuropsychological testing are provided.

Cultural issues that can impact testing performance and follow-through of recommendations in addition to psychometric issues are discussed, such as determining level of education, English-speaking skills, illness beliefs, and availability of normative data. When possible, the authors report what measures have been translated and the psychometric properties and normative information on available measures. Because of the lack of consistency and availability of normative data across ethnic groups, I appreciate the authors for providing both a framework that uses a norm-based testing approach versus a hypothesis-based testing approach and guidelines on how to estimate baseline intellectual function, given the variety of education structures in different countries. The authors often use case examples to provide qualitative information on how to apply the various testing approaches in a culturally informed manner that can impact the interpretation of neuropsychological data. For example, chapter authors Mi-Yeoung Jo and Lauren Kwon Dawson illustrate the differences that can occur in the conclusions and recommendations that are made when comparing an evaluation that did not take into account cultural differences with a culturally informed evaluation. A consistent theme that emerges throughout the case examples relates to a fundamental neuropsychological assessment principle: taking the time to fully hear and understand the client in order to provide an accurate and relevant assessment.

This book is recommended as a convenient resource for any neuropsychologist or trainee to have readily available if working with the Asian American population. It provides the essential cultural and practical testing information that would be needed when assessing an Asian American client. Given its cost, clinicians who do not frequently provide services for this population might want to recommend that their local medical library purchase it.

-Angela Yi, PhD

Clinical Neuropsychologist

Shepherd Center

Atlanta, Georgia