The study of brain–behavior relationships is remarkably compelling and at the same time incredibly overwhelming. These relationships are difficult for professors to teach, students to learn, and practitioners to implement. Applying the principles in clinical practice seems impossible at first glance. However, as when you first learned other psychological skills in your training, expertise in neuropsychological interpretation of test data requires diligent practice, a continued desire to better your interpretive skills, learning about theoretical and empirical advances in the field, and finding ways to apply this information in your daily practice of psychology. Hundreds of articles and books elucidating brain–behavior relationships are written each year. Although it is a daunting task to try to digest all of the relevant neuropsychological literature, it is a noble goal nonetheless. Moreover, applying these skills and the knowledge base to individual children requires clinical acumen—something that cannot be taught in any textbook or manual. Though the information contained in this book can help you utilize neuropsychological information in daily assessment and intervention practices, it is not a substitute for the training and supervised experience needed to become a neuropsychologist.
The goal of this book is to provide readers with a survey of the relevant brain–behavior literature and practices, but the material presented is not exhaustive. Because most training programs require at least one course in the biological bases of behavior, we presume that most of our readers will have had one or more courses in neuropsychology or the neurophysiology of behavior, but we realize that there will be considerable variability in your training and experience. Prior to reading this book, it may be helpful to review relevant neuropsychology and neuroscience textbooks from your courses, or to examine the resources listed in the chapter appendices. The neuropsychological knowledge base is growing at a phenomenal rate, so many of the concepts we learned in our neuropsychological training have now been revised or discarded. For instance,
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