By Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with educators in Virginia about the science of learning (see below for info about upcoming events). We had a Q&A session and one question in particular stood out:

Does retrieval practice improve learning for neurodiverse learners and students with learning disabilities?

I dug into retrieval practice research with neurodiverse students and I can say (with some certainty) that the answer is “yes.” Keep reading to learn more about how retrieval practice improves learning for students with developmental language disorders, Down syndrome, dyslexia, and ADHD.

Research with neurodiverse students

In my 15+ years of teaching, I have had students with autism spectrum disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, and a range of learning disabilities. I have grown in my understanding of inclusive teaching practices and I strive to incorporate universal design principles in my teaching.

From my classroom experience, I know that retrieval practice improves learning for all of my students, including those who are neurodiverse. But what have researchers found about retrieval practice with neurodiverse learners?

I scoured Google Scholar (here are my tips on how to find new research) and looked through more than 30 research articles. The gist of what I found: Retrieval practice improves learning for neurodiverse students.

(Side note: If you’d like an intro on neurodiversity and what it means in the classroom, I recommend this podcast episode from The Learning Scientists and this podcast episode from Teaching in Higher Ed. For teaching tips, I recommend this article from the University of Illinois CITL.)

Most of the research I found demonstrated that retrieval practice benefits neurodiverse learners compared to re-reading or re-studying material. One aspect of this research I find encouraging is that researchers implemented retrieval practice using different methods, in different classrooms, and in different countries around the world — and there was still a consistent benefit of retrieval practice for neurodiverse learners (see also my literature review of 50 classroom experiments with neurotypical students).

What does this mean for you? Here’s my teaching recommendation: When implementing retrieval practice with neurodiverse students, there’s no “right” way to do it. You know your students best. Experiment with different forms of retrieval practice and see what works for you, your students, and your classroom.

A few personal caveats about my approach:

My goal here was to find an answer to an important question. I didn’t do a thorough systematic review of the literature, the list below is not comprehensive, and I skimmed the articles I found.
I tried to not cherry pick articles. I intentionally focused on research published within the past 10 years, but I’m also subject to confirmation bias.
My colleagues and I published research on the benefits of retrieval practice for students with lower working memory capacity, but that was with college students at a private elite university. I am not an expert on neurodiversity, autism, ADHD, or learning disabilities.

A few caveats about research:

When it comes to drawing conclusions from research, the more accurate response is “it depends.” So, it depends and you don’t have to take my word for it. I encourage you to read the articles that interest you to learn more about the nuances of the researchers’ findings.
Most of the research articles I found had small sample sizes (fewer than 50 participants), but they spanned a wide range of participant ages (ranging from 4-year-olds to 40-year-olds).
I was glad to find research from around the world — including Brazil, Israel, the US, the UK, and Germany — but that also means that the results may or may not generalize to your school or classroom.
The diagnosis criteria varied depending on the neurodiverse student population of interest. I was surprised to find very little retrieval practice research on autism and dyslexia. There are always opportunities for more research!

While I tried to provide links below to open access articles, some of the publications are paywalled (here are my tips on how to access articles for free). I hope that this digest of research articles is helpful for you if you’d like to go down a rabbit hole, or simply to pique your interest.

ADHD research: Knouse et al. (2016); Knouse et al. (2020); Minear et al. (2023); Stern et al. (2023)

Developmental language disorder research: Leonard et al. (2020); Levlin et al. (2022); Leonard et al. (2023); Leonard et al. (2024)

Down syndrome research: Starling et al. (2019); Boundy et al. (2025)

Additional research on retrieval practice: dyslexia, a special needs school, individual differences, and traumatic brain injury

See you in 2025!

I have my fingers crossed that I’ll send a newsletter in December (click here to subscribe), but just in case I don’t, I hope I’ll see you in person or on Zoom next year. Here’s where I’ll be speaking: