In this paper, Bryan Maddox and Bruno D. Zumbo review the notion of aberrant responses in educational and psychological assessment.

They trace the development of this idea from the early work of Lee Cronbach to contemporary interpretations emerging in digital assessment contexts. They contrast approaches that treat aberrant responses as an inherent threat to test integrity and validity—something to be detected, flagged, and removed—with an alternative paradigm, grounded in Cronbach’s perspective, that views unexpected or anomalous responses as a source of formative insight. From this standpoint, aberrant responses can deepen understanding of test content and design and illuminate the diverse ways in which test‑takers engage with assessments and questionnaires. They argue that this latter orientation offers a more robust and future ready foundation for psychometrics and AI‑based models of assessment responding.