Neuropsychological Assessment with Asian-American Immigrants

Abstract

Many Asian-Americans are immigrants for whom English is a second language. These characteristics pose challenges for clinical neuropsychologists who must evaluate these clients. This task can be more daunting within a forensic context in which the neuropsychologist must meet the Daubert Standard for admissibility of scientific evidence. The purpose of this paper is to provide neuropsychologists with guidelines to perform forensic neuropsychological evaluations with Asian-American immigrants that would address the Daubert Standard. We briefly review the history of admissibility of scientific evidence for U.S. courts and the admissibility of neuropsychologist testing in general. Specific issues for testing Asian-American immigrants are identified and strategies offered for hypothesis testing, information gathering, test selection, administration, interpretation, and report writing. The paper concludes with considerations for accepting a forensic case with this population.

Key Words:

• Neuropsychology
• culture
• forensic
• Asian