Essentials of School Neuropsychology Assessment by Daniel C. Miller

During my vacation I read a few books, among them one psychology book:

Essentials of School Neuropsychology Assessment

by

  DANIEL C. MILLER

This book belongs to the excellent Essentials series, edited by Nadeen and Alan Kaufman.

Daniel Miller presents here his SNP (school neuropsychology) model, which he revised in 2012 in light of the CHC approach.

I hope to present the SNP model in some detail in one of the following posts.

What I liked about the book:

1.    It is written in an organized and clear way.

2.    It presents a slightly different model than the CHC model, and thus provides us with an alternative approach to data analysis.  I think that a report written in light of the SNP model is as good as a report written in light of the CHC model or the PASS model.  It's important, though,   that the psychologist state in the report the theory he used in analyzing the data.

3.    Daniel Miller emphasizes a qualitative approach to data analysis, and gives a few examples of such analysis.  I think that is wonderful.

4.    He provides information about neurological structures that lie at the base of the cognitive abilities, and defines many neurological syndromes.

5.    He emphasizes an integrative  approach to data analysis, both in terms of integrating the results of different tests and in terms of integrating test results with information from the school staff, the parents and  the child and with qualitative observation.

What I liked less about the book:

1.     Daniel Miller promotes a very wide scale, detailed assessment.  He gives an example of a report that contains a few really good ideas about report writing, but that is based on a large number of tests, much more tests than we (school psychologists) usually use in the most comprehensive assessment that we conduct.  The report itself is very long and detailed, in a way that was a bit tiring to read.

2.    He sometimes seemed to draw conclusions that looked a bit far reaching on the basis of single subtests.

3.    He writes about  the importance of matching recommendations to the findings of the assessment, but doesn't write enough about evidence based interventions that are related to common symptoms and to specific cognitive deficits.

Despite these small shortcomings, the book is interesting and enriching and I recommend reading it.