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.
