Psyched For Business Podcast Episode 9
Episode 9:
An overview of Neurodiversity in Assessments with Rob Dominic
Richard is joined by Rob Dominic, an occupational psychologist and Founder of Viewpoint Psychology. In this episode, Rob gives us a great overview into neurodiversity and assessment.
They cover:
✔️ Defining Neurodiversity
✔️ The importance of inclusion
✔️ How employers can become a more accommodating neurodiverse workplace
✔️ Situational judgement tests, fairness, and neurodiversity
and much more besides.
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Episode 09 - Transcript
Voiceover (00:00:00):
Welcome to Psyched for Business, helping Business Leaders understand and apply cutting edge business psychology principles in the workplace.
Richard Anderson (00:00:11):
Hi, and welcome to Psych for Business. I'm Richard Anderson. Thank you for joining me. In this episode, I'm joined by Rob Dominic. Rob is an occupational psychologist and Founder of Viewpoint Psychology. In this episode, Rob gives us a great overview into neurodiversity and assessment. I hope you enjoy and thanks for listening. So Rob Dominic, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me. How are you doing?
Rob Dominic (00:00:33):
I'm good, thank you.
Richard Anderson (00:00:34):
Brilliant. Well, I'm really glad to have you on. I know that we've been talking about this for some time. We've also got to know each other fairly well, I would say this year, and I know that you've got a lot of insights to share, so I've been looking forward to this one. We're going to talk, Rob, about neurodiversity and specifically about neurodiversity when it comes to assessment, which is a very, very important topic. But before we get into that, would you be happy just to give a bit of an introduction to yourself and your background and what you do?
Rob Dominic (00:01:05):
So, Rob Dominic, I'm a occupational psychologist by background. I have been for about 23 or 24 years. Mainly my focus, I mean it's changed over the years, but mainly it's around assessment, particularly in the last sort of 12, 15 years. So whether that's designing assessment tools such as sort of ability tests or personality questionnaires, or whether it's actually performing kind of deep dive interviews typically with kind of one-to-one, but leaders for two and a half hours to understand their kind of leadership qualities. So, I'd say assessments probably quite a big area for me.
Richard Anderson (00:01:40):
Brilliant. And we share that of course, in common mean less so on the consultancy and the development of these things, but certainly on the technology. So Rob, let's go into the topic of neurodiversity. It's funny because it's a topic that we're hearing more and more about for very good reason of course. You get a lot of influences on social media and LinkedIn and those types of platforms talking about this and bringing this subject into the forefront of people's minds, which like I say is a really important thing. But what about just a bit of a definition to begin with, Rob, what do we mean by neurodiversity?
Rob Dominic (00:02:17):
Yeah, so I think neurodiversity is based on this idea that there are neurological variances within the brain and essentially that those should be recognized and if you like, respected, just like any other kind of human variation that we might have, like gender or eye colour, et cetera. What's kind of important to recognize is that there isn't really a standard human brain. There's no one brain that we can then compare all other brains against to say, look, this is how it should be. A little bit like our fingerprint being unique for each individual.
So our brains, they are so complex that there isn't one exactly alike another. So I think it's those quite wide range, sort of natural neurological differences in the brain that affect the way we learn, how we think and how we kind of process information. So everyone's brains wired differently. We all have our own unique way of thinking, interacting, and experiencing the world. So those kind of differences, I guess from a neurodiversity perspective means that what one person may find easy, another person might struggle with or vice versa. And I think ultimately it's really about inclusion and ensuring that people in society are treated equally, if you like.
Richard Anderson (00:03:45):
Yeah, and you mentioned that word inclusion there. So we know that there's a lot of businesses out there that are putting diversity inclusion strategies in place and they're being measured against those. We've known for quite some time or I feel like we've known for quite some time about inclusion when it comes to things like gender, ethnicity, age, they're fairly established I would say. Would you say that maybe neurodiversity is the new kid on the block?
Rob Dominic (00:04:09):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. If I reflect on what we're kind of asked to do as assessment experts in our work is that often organizations want to know for example, say how a test is performing and they'll ask questions around gender, they'll ask questions on ethnicity and on age grouping. And recently we actually submitted some of our tests to the British Psychological Society for their review. And that's considered to be the kind of gold standard in terms of how tests are evaluated.
That's the information amongst some other things that they want, but there's no request for information around kind of neurodiversity. So I think you're right in that, as you say, that kind of new kid on the block here it is, I think we've known about differences in terms of like learning differences in individuals some time. But actually it's only recently that there's a kind of lens that's been put on this and organizations are starting to see it's something that they need to take very seriously and I think that's happening. But they're also starting to ask questions about what can they do to make sure that they are as inclusive as possible in terms of attracting candidates that are neurodiverse.
Richard Anderson (00:05:22):
Yeah, because ultimately neurodivergence is an asset of course to any business. So we talked a little bit about the brain being different in each individual. So when it comes to neurodiversity, we're talking things like autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, these are all kind of labels you might see within that umbrella term of neurodiversity. But, you know, when it comes to assessment, is there a one size fits all or do you have to treat all of these different areas within neurodiversity very, very differently.
Rob Dominic (00:05:55):
I mean, you hit a lot of the common sort of categories if you like, or labels. Tourette's syndrome would probably be the only other one I'd add to that as the kind of really common ones. But I think what we are seeing in terms of assessment is that there isn't exactly a one size fits all. That's for us a kind of systematically removing barriers from an assessment would be the kind of gold standard. That's what we really want is that therefore it's one and actually it doesn't impact on any one individual differently to others.
So that's our gold standard. What we tend to actually do is really focus around making a kind of accommodations or reasonable adjustments to test and make sure that actually that they reduce the impact, if you like, on individuals that have a part of a kind of neurominority.
What we see is a more spiky profile when it comes to that neurodiversity because there are greater highs and greater lows in terms of some of the strengths. If we go to that kind of the list that you went through around the more common labels, so ADHD, you're looking at around about 4% of the population that have ADHD and there are potential strengths that come with that and there are sort of potential differences too. So things like creativity, passion, authenticity of what some other kind of real strengths. I think Greta Thunberg talked a bit about it from my own perspective, calling it, you know, superpower.
But some of the differences are that inattention are the hyperactivity, there's a kind of impulsiveness that sort of comes with that. Whereas autism, they think now that's a roundabout 2% of the population that are autistic. You get with that kind of honesty, you get the kind of concentration, you get that kind of fine detail processing often have great memories particularly for the sort of detail, but they perceive the world differently.
If you are an organization that's perhaps using an interview as part of its kind of recruitment process like many other organizations will do, if you are expecting someone particularly that's autistic to be able to present themselves kind of fluently, to be able to read the room in terms of some other body language that people might be demonstrating and sort of pick up on more of the kind of social aspects of that, then chances are that these candidates aren't going to do that and in effect you would be discriminating against them on that basis. They perceive the world very differently. Social cues, sensory difficulties, so just things like fluorescent lighting as well can be quite challenging for some people who are autistic and they can often come across as being quite sort of blunt and direct.
Dyslexia is probably another big one. About 10% of the population are dyslexic. Interestingly, some other kind of research that I've seen on dyslexia and entrepreneurs, is that they estimate around about 35% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Again, some other, if you like, the superpowers that come with those are creativity, sort of visual thinking, you've got mechanical skills. You again, that authenticity that comes with it, but perhaps less in terms of the language processing, organization, motor skills.
Dyspraxia is another one if you wanted to think about that one. 6% of the population often have great verbal skills, empathy, intuition, honesty or kind of positive traits that come with them, but might be quite clumsy. The fine motor and gross motor skills tend not to be the best. Can struggle with eye contact. So again, in an interview setting, their eyes can kind of move around much more and can be a little disorganized.
Richard Anderson (00:09:47):
So very different superpowers but very different challenges in each of the groups.
Rob Dominic (00:09:52):
If you really kind of focus on something like autism, Alan Turing, I think one of the quotes that he's quite famous for is that he said, “Sometimes it's the people that no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.” He was autistic. And I think what we've seen in society is that autistic people of largely been overlooked in terms of the contribution that they can make. I think the majority of autistic adults are unemployed. They tend to have poor mental health whilst kind of being unemployed and poor mental health might be linked. Actually they're not linked to autism and we've tended to view autism really as a disease.
Richard Anderson (00:10:35):
So the mental health is probably or could be attributed to the way that they've either been treated or the life experiences that they've had because they've not been given the same opportunities as neurotypical people.
Rob Dominic (00:10:44):
Yeah. And suicide rates or attempted suicide rates are extremely high in autistic individuals but yet they have fantastic attention to detail that kind of detail, that strong interest in systems, understanding how things work, interested in experimentation, modifying systems. And I think that's where things like invention or being able to kind of think really differently about something kind of comes into play. We often call it like pattern recognition. And so it's the things that are predictable and once you've kind of got that pattern, being able to flip it and turn it round and look at it differently and play with it, means that actually you can start to think very differently about something. So a little bit like Alan Turing in terms of the kind of code breaking often considered as the kind of founding sort of father of kind of the early computer.
Richard Anderson (00:11:39):
Well yeah. Where would we be without him? That's a hugely important message. It's really interesting and important stuff, Rob. I think when we use assessments for recruitment selection, especially with bigger organizations, sometimes we need to be practical in the sense that you get hundreds, potentially thousands of applicants for certain roles with certain organizations and more often than not there needs to be some sort of sift put in there and often that's some type of psychometric assessment. So how do we strike the balance between ensuring that we're giving neurodiverse or neurodivergent individuals the opportunity to get through to the next stage after that assessment, but at the same time knowing that as businesses they have a job on responsibility to be able to sift and get X amount of people through the process. So how do we strike the balance? Ultimately it's about making the assessments fair and inclusive, presumably for neurodivergent individuals.
Rob Dominic (00:12:33):
A lot of testing in this aspect requires what we would refer to as kind of reasonable adjustments or accommodations. And that doesn't just kind of end with assessment. That kind of is then taken into the workplace as well. So there are certain accommodations that need to be made just as you would for someone that was physically disabled. We kind of accept that and make certain adjustments about the desk and et cetera, but also therefore need to be made for individuals that are neurodivergent and have specific needs. But if you like, your sort of invisible needs there.
So typically it is about kind of adjustments. That can be something as simple as extending the time of a test to redesigning an alternative form of that test in order to get at the kind of qualities that you are really looking for.
So if I go back to that example of the interview where you might expect someone to be kind of fluent holding eye contact, being able to pick up on the kind of cues of sort of the behaviour of the interviewer. If those are the things that you are expecting and you're not seeing those, then actually you might be making a judgement on. So devising a new assessment for them, is it really about focusing on what are the skills that you really need? So it might be around coding or depending on the role, whatever the kind of qualities you're looking for. So it's really about focusing on what you want to assess and finding a way of doing that that works for the individual and removing everything else from it.
As I said before, it's kind of ultimately what you want in your assessment process or from your assessment tools is systematic fairness in that actually the test itself doesn't require reasonable adjustment because it doesn't have that impact. And I think what we are seeing as one of, you know, an opportunity to gain as much of that kind of systematic fairness from a test is the situational judgement test, which is really about kind of presenting different scenarios to candidates about a particular role and then giving them some options to look at and evaluate and to decide which are the most appropriate or least appropriate kind of responses to take in those situations.
So some of the work that we've been doing with Mencap over the last few months has been really valuable for us. It's really given us some different things to think about. For example, the kind of use of the language that you've got within your test need to be simple, need to avoid where you can kind of long words, and I don't mean sort of just words that are uncommon, but actually the length of the words with all the letters was really about kind of keeping it simple but also another thing that we've done to all of our tests now is kind of included the use of illustrations because what became really clear is if your situational judgement test either had a video of the scenario and therefore doesn't require any reading, that was seen as hugely positive or if you had some sort of illustration of the situation that kind of brought it to life, reduced the requirement to kind of use, if you like, your own imagination and put yourself into that situation because you can see it sort of more visually in front of you. And those help to convey the meaning of the situation more fluently for individuals that were neurodiverse.
Richard Anderson (00:16:03):
So adding those extra layers if you like, so that video or that imagery to the question, give it a bit of a level playing field there for those neurodivergent individuals. That's interesting Rob. So situational judgement tests have been shown to be the fairest. Is there still, because I mean I've had a podcast that I've recorded fairly recently about the, the concept of intelligence, just general intelligence and we're talking about IQ tests and then ability tests, numerical verbal reasoning, those types of things. Has there been any research in terms of how those types of tests might either discriminate or not offer a level playing field to neurodivergent individuals? ‘Cause they're timed and those types of things. I can imagine there'll be immense pressure there for somebody sitting it
Rob Dominic (00:16:47):
The moment we time a test or that we have something which is cognitively loaded. So it's kind of, you know, challenging and you know, there's a right or wrong kind of response to it, then you are at risk of having some sort of adverse impact on a group or a category of individuals, so that there's always a risk of that because of those two kind of elements that come with the testing. The history or the kind of the back dropping which kind of we are now looking at sort of individuals that are neurodiverse versus, I mean it’s a really unpleasant one, in terms of how individuals that are or autistic or neurodiverse in general have been treated.
So we've tried to, in our history as well as other countries in a sense try to prevent individuals that have learning difficulties from reproducing. I mean there's a lot in terms of the historical kind of understanding of this, which I think needs to be kind of taken into perspective when we start thinking about it because it's quite ugly in terms of, you know, some of the actions that have been taken against people. And if you think about Alan Turing in terms of how he was treated for things that were, he was different for at the time and we perhaps think it's kind of not acceptable today, but as you say, also we're still learning.
So there are still discoveries being made and differences that are being found. And as I said at the beginning, the brain, there isn't one kind of template to say, look, this is normal, we are all wired differently. And I think what we really need is kind of much more research into it, a better understanding. And what we really want to move towards is actually seeing this as something which is kind of every day because as I said, 20% of the population are classified as neurodivergent, even the term neurodivergent, really what we're talking neurominorities is probably better terminology for it. So we need to find a language around it, how we express it that is also inclusive, that celebrates some of those kind of differences rather than shame them. And I think too much of our history has been around kind of shaming. As I say, we kind of considered autism a disease. I mean that's just a terrible sort of start point in terms of a language for it.
So what we really need is more studies and build our understanding of it. And so Simon Baron-Cohen has probably been one of the kind of pioneers, particularly around autism, and we want big data and one of the kind of studies that he's done that comes to mind is they took 600,000 people and then 36,000 autistic people in their study. So that is big data and they've actually given them three questionnaires.
So one was a measure of EQ, so if you like empathy. Another was a measure around kind of systems interests, so that kind of understanding systems. And then the final one was around autistic traits because we all have some level of autism or autistic traits are within us, it's just some are much more severe than others. So it's not like we don't have any of it because actually we've all got bits. And what they then did is that they divided the people into those that were STEM versus non-STEM. So that's the kind of science technology, engineering, mathematics kind of careers. And what they found is that people in STEM have more autistic traits.
So in terms of that autism sort of questionnaire that they completed they had more autistic traits and they also found that females tended to be higher on the empathy and males more on the systematizing. And this isn't about kind of stereotyping because it wasn't that they were trying to say that all males and all females have these differences. Gender wasn't the predictor, but there was a difference there that was kind of noticed.
And what they also found is that autistic people were either quite high on systemizing or extremely high on systemizing. So they have that difficulty with empathizing. So in terms of kind of managing relationships, so which must make it hugely challenging for them to show up at an interview in an organization and present themselves in the best possible way because so much of an interview relies on the ability to kind of relate to another person around kind of communicating fluently, getting your kind of best side across, understanding if you like, what the individual is implying through the way they're saying things, the kind of social cues and being able to miss that \ must make it hugely challenging.
Richard Anderson (00:21:45):
Yeah, I completely agree. I mean you need to have the appropriate, whether it's assessment or interview in place for the individuals that you're going to recruit into that particular role. So we've talked Rob about situational judgement tests and how we're seeing that they're more or they're fairer or more inclusive. But what's the reason for that? Why would you say they're more inclusive above and beyond something like inability or cognitive ability test?
Rob Dominic (00:22:14):
So we've been developing situational judgement tests for quite a number of years now and we've built up good databases, so of tens of thousands of data of people that have completed tests that we've developed. Through a lot of that we've been able to track things like gender, ethnicity and age groups because again, organizations are very familiar with tracking that type of information to make sure their recruitment process is a fair one. So we've been able to get that data and what we are seeing is a kind of clear pattern across all of the different types of situational judgement tests that we've got and we've got some from customer service through to graduates and managers is that they tend to be a much fairer and a more inclusive type of test for gender, ethnicity and age. So you don't observe the same sorts of differences that you might with other sort of more particularly say some of the cognitive test.
We think that one of the reasons for that really comes down to the fact that they're untimed. So you can take as long as you'd like if you'd like. So whereas the vast majority of cognitive tests are timed, so you are looking for someone's what we refer to as kind of maximal performance. So you have 15 minutes or 20 minutes, however long the test is, do your best in that time period and you see a complete focus on a test.
So a test which is untimed obviously means that you can relax into it a little bit more. You don't get the same sort of performance anxiety as you might do with something that is timed. And then I think the other particularly important part of a situational judgment test is they're not cognitively complex. They assess behaviour and whilst they're challenging in the sense that you don't always kind of see them, you know, it's not an obvious sort of responses that you're looking for, they don't have the same kind of right or wrong type response as you might do say with a numerical reasoning type test.
So it's really about assessing something which is much more accessible and you can make that more accessible in terms of the language that you use. So anyone, regardless of their experience that they've had can come at these sorts of tests, read the scenario, read the options there and fully understand it without having any experience of say being a leader, you could still complete a situational judgment, test focused on leadership skills and understand and respond to the items in a way that kind of represents you. And I think that accessibility of them is another tremendous sort of advantage that it has around making them more inclusive.
Richard Anderson (00:24:55):
So we talk about tests being discriminatory and I like that term adverse impact studies that are often or should be always undertaken on tests to make sure they're not adversely impacting any particular group. And I know from my experience that's typically been age, gender, ethnicity, those types of things. Do you ever think Rob will get to a point where we can do adverse impact studies on neurodiversity and if so, will we have to capture that information up front from candidates?
Rob Dominic (00:25:26):
I mean it's a really good point and I think that's actually what we need. We need more studies done on individuals and to understand kind of those that are neurodivergent versus those that aren't and also the different types of neurodivergent categories because we need to understand how our assessments are impacting individuals so we can make better choices about changing them or better choices about the reasonable adjustments or accommodations that we would make for individuals. And then unfortunately, as you said at the beginning, neurodiversity is kind of the new kid on the block, so we don't really … we're not there in our thinking yet. Organizations seem to be very much aware of it, very much interested in it and want to be kind of doing the right thing. We're having a lot of conversations with companies about it, but there's still a sensitivity around asking questions for it.
So individuals need to feel that if they are providing this information on themselves, that it's a safe environment to do so and that they're not going to be treated any differently. And as we've already talked about with some other kind of, you know, historical background to some of this, that's not been the case. So you don't have a sort of very open, willing group of individuals that are happy to share this information about themselves because typically it's been used against them. If you've got Tourette’s and you went to school, chances are you would've been bullied. It's not something that we have traditionally seen as a positive, but it is something we need to start embracing much more and understanding the kind of positives that come with it because that certainly has that impact.
So we need to encourage organizations to start asking about this and we need to be able to include it in some of the validation studies that we're doing with our tests because we would want to change them. And you want to make sure that everyone's kind of treated fairly because it's a basic human right.
Richard Anderson (00:27:24):
Of course it is. And it's one thing for organizations to create that environment as part of that application process in which candidates can readily volunteer that information as part of that application, but also for the candidates to do it themselves. Because I suppose we can draw some solids from the fact that if you went back, and I'm guessing here, Rob, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if you went back 20, 30 years, we might have said the same thing about things like ethnicity, age, gender, but now we are getting that information and we are able to perform those adverse impact studies.
Rob Dominic (00:27:58):
And I think the more research that's done on it, both in terms of organizations like mine that are building tests, but also within academia, more of that that's done, the more collaboration that kind of happens with organizations, with companies but also with other organizations like Mencap that are interested in neurodiversity. I think that's to our benefit and to everyone's benefit, but it's a sensitive topic at the moment and I think it's one that we need to get much more used to it being something which is every day. I'd quite like to get to the point where we say my colleague’s autistic.
Richard Anderson (00:28:39):
Of course it would. Fully agree. Brilliant. Rob. I've really enjoyed that discussion. I think we've got lots of takeaways from it in terms of what we need to do, what the evidence or what you've seen so far is happening with neurodiversity and assessment, what we need to do, I'd be keen if you're happy to just if you wouldn't mind telling the listeners how they could contact you if they want any more information or they want to get in touch with it to any of the services that you provide, how do they do that?
Rob Dominic (00:29:07):
Obviously if they already have your email address, they can kind of reach out to you to get to me, but our website is viewpoint-psychology.com or you can contact me either through the website there or you can find me on LinkedIn is another easy way to get in contact with me.
Richard Anderson (00:29:22):
Brilliant. Rob, thank you very much for your time.
Rob Dominic (00:29:26):
Thank you.
Voiceover (00:29:27):
Thanks for listening to Psyched for Business. For show notes, resources and more, visit evolveassess.com.
