Not Cognitive Overload------It Wasn't Even Taught
Dr. Gwendolyn Lavert, PhD
Cognitive Literacy Strategist | Early Literacy & Numeracy Expert | Helping Schools Reach 90% Proficiency by Grade 3
They said Jeremy had cognitive overload.
Thirty minutes into the state test, he put his head down. He needed a break. Then he went to sleep. His teacher was confused. She had taught the strategies: Main Idea, Inference, Context Clues. He could demonstrate them. But during the test, they didn’t seem to work. He guessed. He picked what seemed to fit. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But more often, Jeremy froze. He was overwhelmed. Or so they said.
But I knew instantly—this wasn’t overload. And it wasn’t failure.
This wasn’t Jeremy’s fault. And it wasn’t the teacher’s fault either.
The real issue? Neither Jeremy nor his teacher had been taught about cognitive functions.
Stop Mislabeling the Struggle
Let’s pause and name something schools keep getting wrong.
We love to throw around buzzwords like "cognitive overload" and "executive functioning"—but we rarely go beneath the surface. These terms have become catch-all explanations for students who freeze, guess, disengage, or shut down.
But here’s the hard truth:
Cognitive overload is when the brain is given too much to process at once.
But how can the brain process something that has never been taught?
We say we’ve taught executive functions. Ready? Let’s get clear:
Executive functions depend on cognitive functions.
And those cognitive functions? The very mental operations that make thinking possible?
We’re not teaching them.
And when schools do attempt to teach thinking, they often confuse it with test-taking skills, mindset slogans, or isolated logic puzzles—none of which build the foundational operations that students like Jeremy are missing.
How Do We Know It Wasn’t Taught?
Because in most classrooms, strategies are taught directly, but cognitive functions are expected to be already there. No time is spent explicitly building comparison, sequencing, or part-to-whole reasoning. We assess these mental processes through answers, but we rarely teach them as skills. When Jeremy froze, it wasn’t a shutdown. It was a signal: I’ve never been taught how to do this.
The Engine Behind Strategy, Metacognition, and Performance
Strategies don’t work unless the mind can do the work beneath the surface:
These are cognitive functions. They are the engine that runs the brain.
Executive functions? They’re the dashboard. Strategies? They’re the navigation. But if the engine hasn’t been built or tuned? Everything crashes.
Jeremy didn’t need another anchor chart. He didn’t need a new reading strategy. He needed someone to teach him how to think when the strategy doesn’t fit.
What We Must Do Now
Until educators and leaders understand and integrate cognitive functions into classrooms, we will keep misdiagnosing the struggle.
We will keep blaming overload. We will keep reteaching strategies. We will keep losing students—and blaming them for what they were never taught to do.
If we want students to reach metacognition, they need cognition first. If we want equity in performance, we need equity in how the brain is trained.
Let’s stop calling it overload. Let’s start building the minds we’re trying to measure.
I Don’t Hold a Secret—I’m Holding the Missing Piece
This is not theory—this is proven practice. The missing layer in classrooms across the country can be rebuilt. I’ve done it. I’ve trained leaders, rewired classrooms, and helped schools move students to proficiency by reintroducing the thinking they were never taught.
If you're serious about transforming outcomes—not just scores—then it's time to stop guessing and start thinking differently.
References
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Harvard University Press.
Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print. MIT Press.
Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y., & Feuerstein, R. S. (2006). Creating and Enhancing Cognitive Modifiability: The Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Program. ICELP Publications.
Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.
Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285.
National Center for Learning Disabilities. (2017). The State of Learning Disabilities: Understanding the 1 in 5.
#TeachCognitionFirst #BuildTheBrain #ThinkBeforeYouTest #BeyondOverload #ReadingStartsWithThinking #CognitiveFunctionsMatter #NeurodiverseNotDeficient #StrategicThinkingMatters #FromComprehensionToCognition #CloseTheThinkingGap**