When Brains Get Flooded: Cognitive Overload in Neurodivergent Learners

TL;DR

• Cognitive overload happens when the brain’s working memory has more on its plate than it can handle. This overload affects focus, processing, and memory.

• For neurotypical students, overload may cause frustration or brief disengagement, but they often reset quickly with scaffolding or a break.

• For neurodivergent students, overload hits harder and lasts longer; what looks like misbehavior may actually be self-protective. Explicit supports and permission to pause are vital.
  
  Let’s explore what’s going on when students “check out” mid-task—and how we can respond in ways that restore learning, not shut it down.

This Post Will Resonate Most With

• Academic coaches and tutors who want to notice and support overload in 1-on-1 settings.

• Classroom teachers looking for actionable ways to differentiate between defiance and cognitive overwhelm.

🧠 What Cognitive Overload Is

Over the past year, I’ve leaned into the concept of cognitive overload more than ever—enough that I updated our Working Memory mini-lecture in last year’s Finals Without Freakout masterclass to include it explicitly. And you know what? I genuinely believe this is one of the most important mini-lectures I teach.

Why? Because cognitive overload touches every part of academic and personal life: when the material is too advanced, emotions are running high, instructions pile up, or the environment is chaotic. That’s why I revisit this mini-lecture across subjects—when introducing planners, designing note-taking systems, practicing retrieval, or planning study schedules. Understanding overload creates space for both diagnosing breakdowns and building pathways forward.

One piece I haven’t explored publicly yet—until now—is the difference between how overload shows up in neurotypical versus neurodivergent learners. Digging deeper for our new Emotional Regulation micro-credential in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab has made this distinction feel urgent—and essential.

🌱 How It Plays Out in Neurotypical Brains

When neurotypical learners hit overload, it often looks familiar: a frown, a slowed pace, or a few minutes of checking out. I’ve seen this countless times in teaching and coaching—students push until they hit a wall, but after a short pause, a quick chunking of information, or a scaffolded prompt, they bounce back. It’s like a circuit breaker: power goes out, but a reset restores the lights.

That’s why I remind educators: for many neurotypical students, overload is uncomfortable but brief—and recovery is often rapid with the right nudge. These moments are not derailments but teachable resets.

🌈 How It Plays Out in Neurodivergent Brains

The picture changes dramatically when we look at neurodivergent learners.

Take ADHD, for example. Because working memory and attentional control are already more fragile, overload doesn’t just feel like a bump in the road — it can trigger a cascade of emotional responses: frustration, shame, or even a complete shutdown. And while a neurotypical student might recover in minutes, an ADHD student could need much longer before they’re truly able to re-engage.

I’ll never forget working with a high schooler who had ADHD and a big math test on the horizon. We’d mapped out a clear, manageable study plan, but barely ten minutes in he slammed his pencil down and muttered, “I can’t do this. I’m done.” Early in my career, I might have pushed him to “just try harder.” But now I recognize that moment for what it was: overload. So instead, I invited him to pause. We stood up, stretched, even laughed for a minute. By the time he sat back down, the cloud had lifted. He completed his problems and left our session proud. His ability hadn’t changed — only his capacity to reset.

For autistic students, overload often starts before academic content even enters the picture. Sensory input — the buzz of fluorescent lights, the scrape of chairs, the chatter of classmates — can flood the system to the point that learning becomes impossible. When we see meltdowns, shutdowns, or withdrawal, it’s not defiance. It’s neurological self-protection.

Students with dyslexia or other language-based learning differences face their own overload story. Just decoding text can consume so much of their working memory that little is left for comprehension or strategy. The result? Reading fatigue, slower progress, or a sense that the words themselves are slipping away.

And let’s not forget anxiety and trauma histories. For these students, stress narrows the “window of tolerance.” Even a small increase in cognitive demand can push them into fight, flight, or freeze — and once they’re there, higher-order learning is offline.

In all these cases, overload isn’t just a blip. It can take much longer to reset, and the signals we see on the outside — fidgeting, withdrawal, lashing out — are often misunderstood as misbehavior when they’re really the brain’s SOS.

🔑 Key Differences

So what’s the bottom line?

• Neurodivergent students often reach overload faster.

• Recovery takes longer.

• The signs may be misread as attitude or avoidance.

• Supports need to be explicit and external — visuals, organizers, regulation strategies, and most of all, permission to pause.

This is why understanding overload is not just a “nice to know” — it’s a critical equity issue in education.

📚 Research Spotlight

The science backs up what many of us observe daily. If you’d like to read more deeply, you may want to start with these:

• John Sweller’s foundational work on Cognitive Load Theory, exploring the limits of working memory and how instructional design can support learning.

• Gathercole & Alloway (2008) offer Working Memory and Learning: A Practical Guide for Teachers, a classroom-friendly resource that details how working memory difficulties affect students and ways to support them.

• Steven K. Kapp’s 2025 open-access article on sensory–movement underpinnings in autism, highlighting how sensory and emotional load can be as impactful as cognitive demand in neurodivergent learners.

🧠 Modeling the Mindset

In the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, we remind ourselves that we want to model the reflective learners we hope students will become.

For educators:

• When have you mistaken overload for defiance?

• What cues tell you a student’s brain is “full?”

For students:

• How do you recognize when your brain has had enough?

• What tools help you reset when you feel overwhelmed?

Naming overload for what it is can be deeply empowering — it takes the shame away and opens the door to action.

📣 Call to Action

If this resonates, I’d love to invite you into the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. Our brand-new Emotional Regulation micro-credential was designed with ADHD students in mind, but its insights help across the board. You’ll walk away with student-tested tools for spotting overload and guiding students back to calm. Learn more about the Lab here or get access to the free resources in our Visitor’s Center here.