Consulting Psychology Journal, Vol 76(1), Mar 2024, 20-41; doi:10.1037/cpb0000271
Research on neurodiversity is sparse, and from an academic point of view, the current research suffers from poor and conflicting definitions and offers little guidance on practical support in organizational contexts (Doyle, 2020). Therefore, practitioners are left with little empirical research to help guide best practices for talent assessment. This study aims to address this gap between science and practice by analyzing how neurodivergent individuals perform on selection assessments measuring multiple constructs of cognitive ability and in multiple test formats when compared to neurotypical participants. To do this, the scores of nearly 500,000 participants across seven different practice versions of widely used cognitive ability assessments were analyzed. Results show that neurodivergent participants are generally able to achieve similar scores in a similar amount of time as neurotypical participants, providing preliminary evidence that cognitive ability assessments show promise for assessing the neurodiverse talent pool in a way that provides a fair and inclusive opportunity for all candidates to demonstrate their job-related abilities. Our findings also provide valuable insight into how assessment methods can impact a neurodivergent individual’s performance dependent on their self-disclosed neurodivergent category. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of these results, including how they may affect the appropriateness of traditional accommodations such as providing additional time to candidates on assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)