Culturally Informed Neuropsychological Practice

This document is created as a part of a series of efforts to enhance the quality of neuropsychological care related to societal and cultural disparity. It compiles general guidance and resources for culturally informed neuropsychological practice and is intended for providers/trainees of neuropsychological services in clinical and academic settings. Information such as language-specific tests and normative data are being compiled in other ongoing projects of the ANA. This document is maintained by the ANA Advocacy Committee (ANAAC) and will be updated periodically. If you encounter resources that would benefit the users of this document, please send the information to ANAAC (asianadvocacy@gmail.com). Due to copyright reasons, we are unable to include any articles here directly. Please feel free to backchannel us or reach out to the ANA community if you have trouble accessing these resources.  Thank you.


Position Paper/General Guidelines

  • Board of Directors (2007). American Academy of Clinical Neuropsychology (AACN) Practice guideline for neuropsychological assessment and consultation. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 21(2), 209-231.
  • Brickman, A. M., Cabo, R., & Manly, J. J. (2006). Ethical issues in cross-cultural neuropsychology. Applied Neuropsychology, 13(2), 91-100.
  • Byrd, D. A., & Manly, J. J. (2005). Cultural considerations in neuropsychological assessment of older adults. In Bush, S. S., & Martin, T. A., (Eds.). Geriatric neuropsychology: Practice essentials. New York, NY: Psychology Press.
  • Cagigas, X. E., & Manly, J. J. (2014). Cultural neuropsychology: The new norm. In M. W. Parsons & T. A. Hammeke (Eds.), Clinical neuropsychology: A pocket handbook for assessment (3rd ed., pp. 132–156). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Cory, J. M. (2020). White privilege in neuropsychology: An ‘invisible knapsack’in need of unpacking?. The Clinical neuropsychologist, 1-13.
    • Byrd, D. A. (2020). Comment on Cory, 2021: White privilege in clinical neuropsychology: unpacking is not enough. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 1-2.
    • Postal, K. (2020). Comment on Cory, 2021:“White privilege in clinical neuropsychology: an invisible ‘knapsack’in need of unpacking,”. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 1-3.
  • Davis, J. M., & D’Amato, R. C. (Eds.). (2013). Neuropsychology of Asians and Asian-Americans: Practical and theoretical considerations. Springer Science & Business Media.
  • Fujii, D. (2017). Conducting a culturally informed neuropsychological evaluation. American Psychological Association.
  • Fujii, D. E. (2018). Developing a cultural context for conducting a neuropsychological evaluation with a culturally diverse client: The ECLECTIC framework. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 32(8), 1356-1392.
  • Lee, T. M. C., Wang, K., & Collinson, S. L. (2016). History of neuropsychology in Asia. In W. Barr, & L. A. Bielauskas (Eds.), Oxford handbooks online (pp. 1–28). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
  • Manly, J. J., & Echemendia, R. J. (2007). Race-specific norms: Using the model of hypertension to understand issues of race, culture, and educa- tion in neuropsychology. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 22, 319 –325. doi:10.1016/j.acn.2007.01.006
  • Puente, A. E., Perez-Garcia, M., Lopez, R. V., Hidalgo-Ruzzante, N. A., & Fasfous, A. F. (2013). Neuropsychological assessment of culturally and educationally dissimilar individuals. In Handbook of multicultural mental health (pp. 225-241). Academic Press.
  • Rivera Mindt, M., Byrd, D., Saez, P., & Manly, J. (2010). Increasing culturally competent neuropsychological services for ethnic minority populations: A Call to action. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 24(3), 429-453.
  • Sue, S., & Sue, D. W. (2000). Conducting psychological research with the Asian American/Pacific Islander population. In Guidelines for Research in Ethnic Minority Communities. Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minority Interests (Author). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  • Judd, T., Capetillo, D, Carrión-Baralt, J., Mármol, L.M., San Miguel-Montes, L., Navarrete, M. G., Puente, A. E., Romero, H. R., Valdés, J., Ruff, R. M., Iverson, G. L., Barth, J. T., Broshek, D. K., Bush, S. S., Koffler, S. P., Reynolds, C. R., Silver, C. H. (2009). Professional considerations for improving the neuropsychological evaluation of Hispanics. Hispanic Neuropsychological Society/National Academy of Neuropsychology. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, 24, 127-135. 
  • Wong, T. M., & Fujii, D. E. (2004). Neuropsychological assessment of Asian Americans: Demographic factors, cultural diversity, and practical guidelines. Applied Neuropsychology, 11, 23-36.


Interpretation and Translation

  • Bolden, B. G. (2000). Towards understanding practices of medical interpreting: Interpreters’ involvement in history taking. Discourse Studies, 2, 387–419. 
  • Casas, R., Guzmán-Vélez, E., Cardona-Rodriguez, J., Rodriguez, N., Quiñones, G., Izaguirre, B., & Tranel, D. (2012). Interpreter-mediated neuropsychological testing of monolingual Spanish speakers. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, 26(1), 88-101.
  • Hambleton, R. K., Merenda, P. F., & Spielberger, C. D. (Eds.). (2004). Adapting educational and psychological tests for cross-cultural assessment. Psychology Press.
  • International Test Commission. (2017). The ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests (Second edition). Retrieved from https://www.intestcom.org/files/guideline_test_adaptation_2ed.pdf
  • Majlesi, A. R., & Plejert, C. (2018). Embodiment in tests of cognitive functioning: A study of an interpreter-mediated dementia evaluation. Dementia, 17(2), 138-163.
  • Plejert, C., Antelius, E., Yazdanpanah, M., & Nielsen, T. R. (2015). ‘There’s a letter called ef’ on challenges and repair in interpreter-mediated tests of cognitive functioning in dementia evaluations: A case study. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 30(2), 163-187.


Acculturation and Bilingualism 

  • Adesope, O. O., Lavin, T., Thompson, T., & Ungerleider, C. (2010). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the cognitive correlates of bilingualism. Review of Educational Research, 80(2), 207-245.
  • Anderson, J. A., Mak, L., Chahi, A. K., & Bialystok, E. (2018). The language and social background questionnaire: Assessing degree of bilingualism in a diverse population. Behavior research methods, 50(1), 250-263.
  • Boone, K. B., Victor, T. L., Wen, J., Razani, J., & Pontón, M. (2007). The association between neuropsychological scores and ethnicity, language, and acculturation variables in a large patient population. Archives of clinical neuropsychology, 22, 355-365.
  • Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (US). Improving Cultural Competence. Rockville (MD): Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (US); 2014. (Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) Series, No. 59.) Appendix B, Instruments To Measure Identity and Acculturation. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK248425/
  • Gertken, L. M., Amengual, M., & Birdsong, D. (2014). Assessing language dominance with the bilingual language profile. Measuring L2 proficiency: Perspectives from SLA, 208-225.
    • https://sites.la.utexas.edu/bilingual/
  • Gollan, T. H., Weissberger, G. H., Runnqvist, E., Montoya, R. I., & Cera, C. M. (2012). Self-ratings of spoken language dominance: A multi-lingual naming test (MINT) and preliminary norms for young and aging Spanish-English bilinguals. Bilingualism (Cambridge, England), 15(3), 594.
    • Sheng, L., Lu, Y., & Gollan, T. H. (2014). Assessing language dominance in Mandarin-English bilinguals: Convergence and divergence between subjective and objective measures. Bilingualism (Cambridge, England), 17(2), 364.
  • Kaushanskaya, M., Blumenfeld, H. K., & Marian, V. (2019). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Ten years later. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1-6.
    • https://bilingualism.northwestern.edu/leapq/
  • Lim, V. P., Liow, S. J. R., Lincoln, M., Chan, Y. H., & Onslow, M. (2008). Determining language dominance in English-Mandarin bilinguals: Development of a self-report classification tool for clinical use. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29(3), 389.
  • Rivera Mindt, M., Arentoft, A., Kubo Germano, K. et al. Neuropsychological, Cognitive, and Theoretical Considerations for Evaluation of Bilingual Individuals. Neuropsychol Rev 18, 255–268 (2008). 
  • Tan, Y. W., Burgess, G. H., & Green, R. J. (2020). The effects of acculturation on neuropsychological test performance: A systematic literature review. The Clinical Neuropsychologist, doi:10.1080/13854046.2020.1714740


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