Understand the psychology
The psychology underpinning the Genius Finder
The Genius Finder profiling assessment is based on ‘neurodiversity’ – broadly the idea that all humans vary in our neurocognitive ability and that this is helpful for a community. Humans are neurodiverse – some of us are generalists and some of us are specialists, with such specialisms varying. In the Genius Finder, we aim to capture the range of work-related skills and abilities that vary and, from that, signpost strengths and strategies to compensate for difficulties. The Genius Finder is based on robust psychological theory and has been subject to psychometric scrutiny, which has found it to be a scientifically reliable and valid measure.
History
Since 2011, Genius Within has worked with over 20,000 neurodivergent people, supporting them to work at their best. Since 2016, we have anonymously mapped which behaviours and skills contribute to effectiveness at work: our clients’ strengths and their struggles. Our findings expand the typical platform of psychometric assessment to include a wider range of experience, finding some of the more hidden aspects of workplace performance and putting those more usually measured together in a new style. Whereas many psychometric assessments start with the average, or norm, we have started with the experiences of neurodivergent people, and arrived at an assessment tool which will be accessible and useful for all people.
We have provided a short summary of the key concepts and framework on this page that we feel will be of interest to a wide range of individuals. For those with a deeper interest still we have provided the Genius Finder Psychometric Technical Manual here that extends this short summary and outlines in detail our conceptual framework, measures of statistical reliability and validity as well as a demographic analysis of any adverse impact. You can also read more about the Psychologists who have collaborated to develop the Genius Finder.
Psychological theories and constructs
The cognition and brain sciences unit at Cambridge University have mapped the cognitive profiles of over 1500 children with a diagnosis of a neurodivergent condition1. They have not been able to replicate the diagnostic categories that we traditionally use in the practice of diagnosis.
Instead, they have found clusters of difficulty in the areas of:
- language processing
- ‘cold’ executive functions
- ‘hot’ executive functions
These findings signal to us that categorising people as per the existing neurotypes (e.g. Autism, Dyspraxia) is unlikely to be a good indicator of what support they need, or indeed where their strengths lie. It is for this reason that the Genius Finder focuses on behavioural markers rather than suggesting diagnostic labels.
The shift in focus to behaviour achieves several objectives:
- Behavioural measures are less intrusive and easier to administer than cognitive testing. For organisations this makes the Genius Finder easier to distribute, without direct psychological supervision or need to capture health care data, which is subject to more stringent data protection and may be experienced as an overreach by employees using the profiler at work.
- Behavioural measures map more closely to performance strategies, reasonable adjustments and accommodations, as opposed to diagnosis, which doesn’t directly map to work without additional assessment. We can therefore use the Genius Finder to understand which direct, concrete and observable actions could improve an individual and a team’s performance for all.
- Behaviour is self-referenced, and directly translatable to the workplace. This is opposed to cognitive ability which does not always translate into performance at work, due to differences in scaffolding, emotional management, social interaction and sensory sensitivity, as well as disabilities in movement and sensory perception.
- We also capture the effect of the environment on current performance, which maps more closely to a workplace needs assessment.
The behavioural categories that we use map onto the under constructs common to all humans and incorporate a wide range of neurological functions.
Three stages to build the Genius Finder categories
Firstly, we use the three domains discovered by the Cambridge team, which encompass the main difficulties experienced by all neurodivergent thinkers and yet remain relevant to all humans.
Language processing
This involves both the production of spoken language and the listening to spoken language, which itself relates to the ability to acquire literacy, and may also affect social communication confidence and long-term memory.
Cold executive functions
These relate to the practical cognitive skills associated with the executive functions such as working memory, attention switching, planning, prioritisation, time management, but also the planning of movement and idea creation.
Hot executive functions
These relate to the cognitive skills required for processing emotion and social interaction, such as risk perception, social filters, emotional resilience and displays.
These constructs do not necessarily cover the whole range of the Genius Finder. For example, sensory management and creativity are not mentioned directly by the Cambridge team, although they do have some overlaps.
Secondly, we added categories related to work performance which are learned, rather than innate.
Crystallized intelligence
Cognitive ability is thought to comprise of both intelligence that is innate, and that which is learned2. ‘Crystallised intelligence’ refers to ability that has been acquired upon a foundational aptitude, through study and education, both formal and informal. An example might be literacy, vocabulary or maths ability.
Finally, we considered areas in which our extensive client base require support, have achieved great compensatory strategies or have outstanding abilities. We added three more categories to provide a full range of behavioural analysis based on both nature and nurture.
Visual-motor integration
Our ability to see how things should move or fit and then move them accordingly is known as visual-motor integration3. Visual motor integration is essential for the delivery of many roles, and can cover tasks as basics as typing and handwriting, all the way to surgery and crane operation.
Emotional intelligence
Salovey and Mayer introduced the theory of emotional intelligence (EI) in the late twentieth century4, as a way of explaining how some people are able to display social skills in a way that translates into job performance. Emotional intelligence forms part of what we are measuring, but aims to divert away from the areas of EI that are related to socially and gender bound behaviour (e.g. all women are nurturers). Like crystallised intelligence, emotional intelligence can be learned and so neurological deficits in hot executive functions do not necessarily predict performance if someone has worked to improve their emotional intelligence.
Sensory processing
Brown and Dunn5 defined the experience of heightened sensory processing within a scale, that allows us to categorise the full range of experience. It is important to note that sensory sensitivity can be both good and bad. If you are a chef or sommelier, enhanced taste is an advantage. If you are a regular employee who needs to eat at a cafeteria it can inhibit your inclusion.
Table 1: An overview of the theoretical constructs behind the Genius Finder
Factor | Theoretical construct |
---|---|
Sensory | Sensory processing |
Literacy | Language, crystallised intelligence |
Self-organising | Cold executive functions |
Numeracy | Cold executive functions, crystallised intelligence |
Creativity | Cold executive functions |
Social communication | Language, cold executive functions, emotional intelligence |
Movement | Cold executive functions, visual-motor integration |
Memory | Cold executive functions |
Reading for detail | Cold executive functions, crystallised intelligence |
Dexterity | Visual-motor integration and cold executive functions |
Typing | Visuo-motor integration, cold executive functions, crystallised intelligence |
Emotions | Hot executive functions, emotional intelligence |
Spatial Reasoning | Visual-motor integration and cold executive functions |
Figure 1: Example profile from the Genius Finder showing the mapping to the theoretical constructs
Psychometric Principles
The Psychometric Technical Manual here presents detailed data on the psychometric properties of the Genius Finder. These data demonstrate that the Genius finder meets the necessary technical requirements with regard to reliability and validity.
Reliability
The reliability of a test assesses the extent to which variation in the test’s scores is due to true differences between people on the characteristics being measured – in this case a set of 13 behavioural measures – or to random measurement error. Reliability is generally assessed using one of two different methods; one assesses the stability of the test’s scores over time (test-retest), the other assesses the internal consistency, or homogeneity, of the test’s items. The Genius Finder has been assessed for internal consistency, with two samples of 534 and 1232 individuals. We expect scores to change over time as people improve their experience using our strategies, or indeed if they change jobs and therefore test-retest is not as useful.
Validity
The fact that a test is reliable only means that the test is consistently measuring a construct, it does not indicate what construct the test is consistently measuring. The concept of validity addresses this issue. As Kline 6 noted “a test is said to be valid if it measures what it claims to measure”. An important point is that a test’s reliability sets an upper limit for its validity. That is to say a test cannot be more valid than it is reliable, because if it is not consistently measuring a construct it cannot be consistently measuring the construct it was developed to assess.
The Genius Finder has been assessed with exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to assess for construct validity, against two samples of 534 and 1,232 individuals working in various companies and departments. The demographic data of the which neurotypes experienced difficulties in which areas also provides a form of concurrent validity.
Further reading about the Psychological validity of Genius Finder
We appreciate this is still a high level summary of the Psychology underpinning Genius Finder. For those with a deeper interest in Psychology and Psychometrics we encourage you to download the Genius Finder Psychometric Technical Manual here that outlines our conceptual framework, measures of statistical reliability and validity as well as a demographic analysis of any adverse impact. For any additional questions please contact nancy@geniuswithin.org.
References
1. (see: Astle et al., 2019, 2023; Jones et al., 2021; Siugzdaite et al., 2020)
2. (Cattell, 1963)
3. (Beery & Beery, 2010)
4. (Salovey & Mayer, 1990)
5. (Brown & Dunn, 2002)
6. Kline (2016)