The Incredible Inconvenience of the Neurodivergent to the “Science of Learning”: You’ll Never See Us Through Your Complexity Controls
Neurodivergent people are treated as noise to be filtered out in most studies supporting the “science of learning”.
The thing is, research like this — serious scientific research into Autism — has historically treated the subjective experiences of its subjects as noise to be filtered out. They all think they can accurately read our emotions if they need to and so don’t need to ask us.
We are discounted as outliers.
The varied and dynamic nature of learning environments – too many variables to isolate one out, the way norm-referencing is leveraged to discount outliers, and the lack of applicable research on neurodiverse students – necessitates a more flexible and holistic approach.
Beyond Pavlov’s Perfect Student | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Michael Weingarth
Our needs and ways of being are deemed too inconvenient to consider.
Which is why the Disability Industry, the SpEd/SEN leadership, and so many groups of frustrated middle-class parents do not, and may not ever understand people with disabilities. Those groups want us to be like them, or want to sell parents and schools “cures” that will make us be like them. They want me to read the way they do, and to read as fast and as “accurately” (which refers to grabbing plot points, nothing else) as they do. They want me to sit still and focus “on the task at hand” the way they do. They want me to move as they do. Think the way they do. Speak the way they do. Understand the world the way they do. All, of course, in pursuit of capitalist conformity and efficiency. (see Stimpunks for the best deep dives into these issues.)
The Incredible Inconvenience of the Neurodivergent. | by Ira David Socol | May, 2025 | Medium
Kids who are different are told every day, every hour, often every minute, by the most well-meaning people, that they are “born wrong” and require repair. And yes, accommodating our differences is inconvenient, it does create costs and work for those with power, but human diversity and neurodiversity, just like every kind of diversity, strengthens every ecosystem.
And believing that, and acting as if you believe it, is the only humane path.
So, the vast majority of studies just ignore us.
This review, which includes 90 studies conducted in 21 countries, reveals that the majority (92%) did not consider neurodiversity as a potential factor influencing cognitive load in online learning.
Our findings reveal a major research gap, as most studies overlook the distinct neurocognitive profiles of neurodivergent students. Notably, ADHD and ASD learners may exhibit unique cognitive load responses, suggesting that established cognitive load theories and instructional design guidelines might not uniformly be applicable in neurodiverse classrooms. Lastly, inconsistent methodologies in measuring cognitive load in online learning point to the need for more uniform research approaches. Future research should prioritise creating adaptive, inclusive online learning environments that respect and accommodate cognitive differences, which will not only benefit neurodivergent students but also enhance the online learning experience for all students.
It is past time to consider neurodiversity. Neuroscience without neurodiversity is often misguided and harmful.
The multimedia principle is the idea from multimedia theory that providing both words (usually spoken) accompanied by images supports learning by maximizing working memory. I’m not an expert by any means on this area of research, but It is quite interesting to think that widely accepted evidence-based principles on instructional design/learning like multimedia theory have not been confirmed for very common disability experiences such as dyslexia.
Overall, it really does seem that we are just beginning to consider and test basic “science of learning” principles with attention to neurodiversity. Indeed, as these authors note, “Research on multimedia learning typically assumes that learning outcomes are the result of the design of materials; however, an equally important but less studied consideration is the role individual differences play.”
I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with phrases like “how learning works,” when it is probably more accurate to say “how learning works for many people”
The complexity control of behaviorism and the science of learning has utterly failed us.
Our students are not surgically modified dogs nor are they pigeons in operant conditioning chambers attempting to learn nonsense words. No child enters a classroom devoid of emotion, interest, or prior knowledge. Owing to the key distinctions between the controlled laboratory and the living classroom, there simply may be no connection between what is taught and what is learned; or between the educational intervention and the desired outcome. This is why, in pedagogies centered on instruction drawn from the narrow view of “The Science of Learning,” behaviorism is a complexity control meant to reduce the number of possible variables between instruction and assessment; to better reproduce the uncomplicated relationship between variables in the Skinner Box. We know from listening to students themselves that there has been a persistent crisis in schools, even before COVID: students ask fewer questions the longer they remain in school, engagement plummets alongside mental health, and absenteeism surges. Ultimately, any science of learning matters far less than its implementation. Maintaining fidelity to what happened in, say, Pavlov’s lab matters significantly less if the practices derived from his work contribute to stress, anxiety, and alienation in students.
If the perfect education system requires that you dehumanize the people in it — adults and kids alike — that’s not a system that “works” by most metrics worth caring about. The kids in our schools have to be viewed as more than behaviorist subjects to be acted upon. If we at least admit that much, then the business of teaching gets far more complicated. Suddenly there are a number of other factors we must tend to that matter a great deal. I’ll quote again from apparent “pseudoscientist” Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, “As human beings, feeling alive means feeling alive in a body but also feeling alive in a society, in a culture; being loved, being part of a group, being accepted, and feeling purposeful.” These are self-evident truths that we are finally beginning to explore the neurobiological basis for in ways that shatter many previous models of the brain that still hold cultural sway.
Beyond Pavlov’s Perfect Student | Human Restoration Project | Nick Covington Michael Weingarth
Building Frankenstein children from reductionist, complexity-controlled parts is morally wrong and utterly wrong-headed. We must foreground complexity as the baseline for the sciences of learning to have any real meaning when applied to the rich complexity and diversity of human actuality.
Stimpunks do a great job reinforcing this through a Neurodiversity lens and are some of the few ND advocates on here who have wonderful language to capture the needed complexities for understanding each human, rather than categorizing humans into buckets.
Further Reading
https://stimpunks.org/2025/05/23/professor-guy-claxton-on-the-science-of-learning/
https://stimpunks.org/2023/11/22/on-the-problems-with-science-of-reading/
https://stimpunks.org/philosophy/were-raising-whole-children-not-frankenstein-children/
https://stimpunks.org/2023/12/10/a-neurobiological-basis-for-progressive-education/
