Why Interruptions Are So Expensive: Attention Residue & Task Re-Entry in Neurodivergent Adults

You are finally deep into a task when someone asks you a quick question. The interruption takes thirty seconds. But when you return, you no longer know exactly where you were, what you had decided or what you were about to do next.

The interruption was short. The recovery was not.

This article explains why interruptions can cost much more than the time they physically take, what attention residue and task re-entry mean, how working memory and task switching contribute, why ADHD, autism and AuDHD can make interruptions especially disruptive for some adults, and how to make returning to a task easier.

🔔 a message breaks your concentration
🧠 the mental map of the task disappears
🔄 part of your attention stays with the interruption
📍 you have to find your place again
🚪 restarting feels almost like beginning from scratch
🪫 repeated interruptions leave you unusually tired

The key idea is: an interruption does not only take your time. It can take your place in the task.

🔔 What Actually Happens When You Are Interrupted?

Imagine you are writing something complicated.

At that moment, your brain may be holding:

🧠 the point you are trying to make
📄 what you just wrote
🎯 where the paragraph is going
❓ a problem you have not solved yet
📝 the sentence you were about to type

Then someone asks:

“Do you know where the charger is?”

You stop.

Think about the charger.

Answer.

Then look back at the screen.

The document is still there.

But part of the mental state that made the document meaningful may no longer be there.

You now have to reconstruct it.

That reconstruction is one reason a thirty-second interruption can produce several minutes of disruption.

🧠 The Task Is More Than What Is Visible on the Screen

A complex task usually contains information that exists only temporarily in your head.

Consider editing a report.

The visible document shows the words.

But your brain may also be carrying:

📌 why you wanted to change this section
🔗 how it connects to something three paragraphs earlier
⚖️ which of two possible arguments you preferred
🚫 what you already decided not to include
➡️ what you planned to do next

None of that necessarily appears on the page.

It lives in your active mental context.

When an interruption disrupts that context, reopening the document does not automatically restore it.

Your brain needs to rebuild the working model of the task.

That is closely connected to Working Memory in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD.

🧩 What Is Task Re-Entry?

Task re-entry is the process of getting back into a task after leaving it.

Researchers studying interruptions often measure something called a resumption lag: the delay between the end of an interruption and the point at which someone successfully resumes the original task. Experimental interruption research shows that people generally need time to recover their place and re-establish what they were doing after an interruption. (ACT-R)

In real life, task re-entry can involve:

👀 looking at what is in front of you
🧠 retrieving what you were thinking
📍 locating the point where you stopped
🎯 recovering the goal
🔄 rebuilding momentum
🚪 initiating the next action again

Sometimes that takes seconds.

Sometimes considerably longer.

🌫️ What Is Attention Residue?

Attention residue describes a related phenomenon.

You physically move from one task to another, but part of your attention remains attached to the task you just left.

The concept was developed in research by Sophie Leroy. Her experiments found that when people switched away from unfinished work, thoughts about the previous task could carry over and interfere with performance on the new task. (IDEAS/RePEc)

Imagine leaving an unfinished email to join a meeting.

Part of your mind is now in the meeting.

But another part is still thinking:

How should I finish that email?

Or you leave a difficult conversation and begin working.

Your body is at your desk.

Your thoughts are still in the conversation.

That carryover is the basic idea behind attention residue.

🔄 Task Re-Entry and Attention Residue Are Different

These concepts are related, but they describe different parts of the interruption problem.

🌫️ Attention residue — some attention remains with the previous task after you leave it.

🚪 Task re-entry — you need to rebuild enough context to resume the task when you return.

An interruption can therefore create problems on both sides.

You leave Task A.

Part of your attention remains with Task A while trying to perform Task B.

Then you return to Task A.

Now you have to reconstruct where you were.

The interruption itself sits in the middle.

The cognitive cost can extend well beyond it.

⚠️ Attention Residue Is Not a Neurodivergent Diagnosis

This distinction is important.

Attention residue comes primarily from general cognitive and workplace research. It is not an ADHD symptom, autism criterion or established AuDHD-specific mechanism. (IDEAS/RePEc)

Everyone can experience interruption costs.

What may differ is how expensive rebuilding the task becomes when interruption interacts with other processes such as:

🧠 working-memory vulnerability
🎯 variable attention regulation
🔄 effortful task switching
🚪 difficulty initiating again
♾️ autistic inertia
🌪️ cognitive or sensory overload

So the responsible claim is not:

“Neurodivergent people have attention residue.”

Humans have attention residue.

The more useful question is:

What other demands make interruption recovery particularly difficult for this person?

⚡ Interruptions and ADHD

ADHD is often associated with being easily distracted, but an interruption problem can be more complicated than attention simply wandering away.

You may finally become deeply engaged in something.

Then:

🔔 interruption arrives
⚡ attention moves quickly toward it
🧠 the previous task context weakens
🔄 you complete the interruption
❓ several other things now compete for attention
🚪 returning requires another initiation

The expensive part may therefore be getting the original mental state back.

Adult ADHD experimental research has found difficulties on some task-switching and dual-task paradigms, although findings vary by task and should not be translated into one universal ADHD “switching deficit.” (PubMed Central (PMC))

This is why distraction and interruption should not be treated as identical.

A distraction may pull your attention away.

An interruption may also destroy the context that allowed productive attention to exist in the first place.

🎯 Deep Focus Can Make Interruption More Expensive

An interesting ADHD paradox is that someone can struggle to enter focus and then struggle enormously when focus is broken.

It took twenty minutes to settle.

You finally know what you are doing.

Your thoughts are moving.

Then:

“Can I ask you something quickly?”

The question takes one minute.

But your earlier state does not simply return on command.

That is why protecting established focus can be more effective than repeatedly expecting yourself to recreate it.

Read Attention Regulation in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD for the wider distinction between having attention and being able to direct it flexibly.

🧠 Working Memory Makes Interruptions More Expensive

Working memory holds information temporarily while you use it.

Interruptions introduce competing information into that limited workspace.

Before:

paragraph argument → evidence → next sentence

During interruption:

charger → which room? → did daughter use it? → maybe kitchen

Afterward:

paragraph… something about… what was I doing?

The visible document may allow some reconstruction.

But information that existed only internally can disappear.

This is why an interruption during a simple repetitive task may cost relatively little, while an interruption during writing, programming, planning or complex decision-making can feel enormous.

The mental context was richer.

There was more to lose.

📍 Losing Your Place Is Not the Same as Forgetting the Task

You usually still know:

“I was writing the report.”

What you have lost is much more specific.

You may not remember:

🧠 which subproblem you were solving
📍 exactly where your reasoning had reached
⚖️ which option you had just rejected
➡️ what your next step was
💭 the thought you had not written down yet

So “I forgot what I was doing” often does not mean the entire activity vanished from memory.

It can mean:

I lost my position inside the activity.

That is a task-context problem.

♾️ Interruptions and Autism

Autistic experiences of interruption can involve another layer: difficulty suspending one activity and then returning to it.

Autistic-led research into autistic inertia includes first-hand descriptions of being unable to suspend a task for an interruption and then pick it up again. Some participants described avoiding tasks partly because they knew an interruption would be difficult to manage. (PubMed Central (PMC))

That does not mean every autistic person experiences interruptions this way.

But it shows why:

“It’s only a quick interruption.”

may completely misrepresent the actual demand.

The person is not only answering your question.

They may need to:

🛑 stop an established state
🔄 enter another state
💬 deal with the new demand
🔄 leave that state
🧠 reconstruct the first one
🚪 get moving again

That is a much larger process.

🧱 An Interrupted Task Can Become a New Task

For some autistic adults, returning does not feel like simply continuing.

It feels like starting something again.

Before the interruption, the task had momentum.

Afterward, there is:

🚪 a starting threshold
🧠 context to reconstruct
🔄 another transition
🎯 attention to re-establish

This is why interruption costs overlap with Task Initiation in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD and Cognitive Flexibility in Autism, ADHD & AuDHD.

You are not necessarily continuing one task.

From the nervous system’s perspective, you may be entering it again.

🔄 Interruptions in AuDHD

AuDHD can create a particularly difficult interruption pattern.

ADHD-related attention capture can make the interruption hard to ignore.

Autistic inertia or deeper state transitions can make leaving and returning more effortful.

The result can feel like:

⚡ easy to knock me out of the task
+
🧱 difficult to get me back into it

Your existing article Why Cognitive Switching Is Hard in AuDHD already describes the experience of moving toward something new while still mentally carrying what came before. (Sensory Overload)

That combination can make a fragmented day surprisingly exhausting.

Nothing dramatic happened.

You just switched twenty times.

📱 Self-Interruptions Count Too

Not all interruptions come from other people.

You can interrupt yourself.

You are writing and think:

“I should check that statistic.”

You open the browser.

While there, you notice email.

You answer one.

Then see another.

Ten minutes later, you have forgotten why the browser was open.

Self-interruptions can include:

📱 checking your phone
📧 opening email
🔍 searching something unrelated
💡 following a new idea
🛒 suddenly remembering another task
💬 sending a message before you forget

These can be particularly deceptive because they feel voluntary.

But a voluntary switch can still create a cognitive switching cost.

Research on real-world technical work also suggests that self-interruptions can be highly disruptive, although those findings come from specific occupational contexts rather than ADHD or autism research. (arXiv)

💡 “I’ll Just Quickly Look This Up”

This is one of the most dangerous phrases in knowledge work.

Sometimes you genuinely need one piece of information before continuing.

But the lookup creates a doorway into an entirely different attention environment.

Your report contained:

📄 one task
🎯 one goal
🧠 one mental context

The browser contains:

🔗 links
📧 messages
🔔 notifications
📰 information
💡 new ideas

So the cognitive problem is not simply that the lookup takes two minutes.

It exposes the current task to new competitors.

A useful workaround is to write:

CHECK LATER: exact figure for 2025

and continue when the missing fact is not essential to the current step.

You preserve the main task rather than sacrificing it to a small information gap.

👥 Social Interruptions Are Hard to Ignore

A notification can sometimes be silenced.

A person standing beside your desk is different.

Social interruptions carry their own demands.

You need to:

👀 orient toward the person
💬 interpret the request
🧠 decide what they need
🎭 shift social presentation
🗣️ formulate an answer
🤝 potentially solve their problem

For neurodivergent adults who already find social processing effortful, a “quick question” may therefore contain far more cognitive work than the question itself suggests.

Then the conversation ends.

And your original task is waiting.

😠 Why Interruptions Can Feel Disproportionately Irritating

Sometimes an interruption creates a level of irritation that surprises even you.

The other person asks an innocent question.

Your internal response is:

NO. NOT NOW.

That reaction may partly reflect the anticipated switching cost.

Your brain may already know, implicitly or explicitly:

“If I leave this now, getting back will be difficult.”

So the interruption is not experienced as:

30 seconds of conversation.

It is experienced more like:

stop + lose context + deal with this + transition back + reconstruct + restart.

This does not justify being hostile to people.

But understanding the hidden cost can help explain why interruption sensitivity increases when you are deeply engaged, overloaded or low on capacity.

🌪️ Interruption Costs Rise When Cognitive Load Is Already High

Suppose your working memory has plenty of spare capacity.

A small interruption arrives.

You may recover easily.

Now suppose you are already managing:

🧠 a complex argument
📊 several numbers
💬 wording decisions
⏰ deadline pressure
🎧 background noise

The same interruption arrives.

There is much more active information that can be displaced.

This is why interruption cost often depends on what you were doing before the interruption.

Cognitive Load in Neurodivergent Adults explains the broader principle:

The task is rarely just the task.

Interruptions add load both by introducing new information and by forcing reconstruction afterward.

🎧 Sensory Interruptions Count Even When Nobody Speaks

An interruption does not require a conversation.

The phone rings.

A dog barks.

Someone drops something.

The lighting changes.

An alarm sounds.

These events can involuntarily reorient attention.

You may never leave your chair.

But your mental activity is interrupted.

For someone whose sensory system notices environmental changes strongly, repeated sensory capture can fragment concentration throughout the day.

That is where this topic connects with Sensory Processing in Neurodivergent Adults.

🪫 Repeated Re-Entry Is Exhausting

Imagine rebuilding a mental model once.

Probably manageable.

Now do it twenty times.

Each time:

🔄 switch out
🧠 hold or lose context
💬 handle interruption
🔄 switch back
📍 find position
🚪 restart

By late afternoon, you may feel as though you have worked intensely while producing surprisingly little.

That does not necessarily mean every re-entry consumed an enormous amount of cognitive resources by itself.

The research base does not give us a universal “X minutes lost per interruption” figure, and popular claims that every interruption automatically costs a fixed number of minutes should be treated cautiously.

What we can say is that interruption research consistently finds costs in reorientation, resumption and performance, and more recent workplace research continues to link frequent intrusions with attention residue and exhaustion. (Taylor & Francis Online)

Repeated small costs can matter.

⏰ Do Not Believe the “23-Minute Rule”

You may have seen claims that every workplace interruption costs 23 minutes or that the brain always needs a particular fixed amount of time to recover.

That is too simple.

Recovery depends on:

🧠 task complexity
📍 interruption timing
⏳ interruption duration
🎯 how deeply you were engaged
🔄 what the interrupting task required
📦 how much context was externally saved
👤 individual differences

Laboratory research often measures interruption costs in seconds or performance errors. Real-world knowledge work can involve much larger subjective and practical costs.

There is no universal stopwatch that starts every time someone says your name.

📝 Save Your Place Before You Switch

One of the simplest interventions is also one of the strongest.

Before leaving a task, write down:

WHERE I AM:
Editing section 4.

WHAT I WAS THINKING:
The second example is too similar to the first.

NEXT:
Replace example 2 with workplace example.

Now you leave.

When you return, the task does not need to explain itself from scratch.

You have created an external restart point.

This is a form of cognitive offloading in principle: moving part of the task context outside your working memory.

Even a one-line note can preserve the mental bridge back.

📌 The “Ready-to-Resume” Plan

Research by Leroy and Glomb tested a similar idea.

Before switching to an interrupting task, participants briefly considered where they had reached in the interrupted task and what they would do when they returned.

This “ready-to-resume” plan reduced attention residue and helped performance on the interrupting task across a series of studies. (IDEAS/RePEc)

The practical version can be extremely short:

Next: finish graph, then write conclusion.

or:

I stopped because I need the figures from Sarah. When they arrive, update paragraph 3.

The goal is not documenting everything.

It is giving your brain confidence that the unfinished task has a clear route back.

🧠 A Restart Note Should Capture the Mental State

A vague note is less helpful.

❌ Continue report.

You already knew you were writing the report.

A useful restart note captures what would otherwise have to be reconstructed.

✅ Check whether figures in table 2 match paragraph 6.

✅ Next sentence: explain why sensory load affects attention.

✅ Need to decide between option A and B; leaning toward B because of cost.

✅ Finished through line 42; bug starts in validation function.

The best note answers:

Where was I?

and:

What happens next?

🚪 Make Re-Entry Smaller

Sometimes you return to a task and the whole task now feels inaccessible.

Do not demand:

“Get completely focused again.”

Start with reorientation.

👀 read the last paragraph
📝 read your restart note
📍 identify the next action
⏳ give yourself five uninterrupted minutes
🚪 begin that one action

Momentum may rebuild afterward.

This is the same principle used in Task Initiation in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD:

make the entry point concrete.

🔕 Protect Work That Is Expensive to Rebuild

Not every task deserves equal protection.

Answering routine messages may tolerate interruption reasonably well.

Writing a difficult argument may not.

So instead of trying to eliminate every interruption from your day, identify tasks with high reconstruction cost.

Examples might include:

🧠 complex writing
💻 programming
🎨 creative work
📊 analysis
🧩 planning
❤️ emotionally difficult conversations
📚 learning unfamiliar material

Protect those periods more aggressively.

🔕 silence notifications
🚪 close the door
📅 block interruption-free time
📱 move the phone away
💬 tell colleagues when you will be available again

The goal is not uninterrupted life.

It is protecting activities for which interruptions are unusually expensive.

📧 Batch Low-Value Interruptions

Email creates a particularly difficult pattern because it can interrupt you even when nobody sends a notification.

You interrupt yourself by checking.

One useful strategy is to create intentional communication windows.

For example:

📧 09:30 email
📧 13:00 email
📧 16:00 email

rather than:

📧 every time uncertainty appears

That will not suit every job, and urgent roles require different arrangements.

The principle is simply to replace unpredictable switching with somewhat more predictable switching where possible.

Predictability reduces the number of transition decisions your brain needs to make.

💼 The Workplace Often Creates the Problem

Some workplaces expect employees to:

📧 answer email instantly
💬 monitor chat continuously
📞 accept unscheduled calls
👥 attend fragmented meetings
🧠 perform deep work
📊 maintain high accuracy

all at the same time.

That is not one demand.

It is several incompatible attentional demands competing for the same workday.

Your existing Workplace Accommodations for AuDHD already identifies interruption cost as involving lost context, momentum, working memory and mental position. (Sensory Overload)

Helpful workplace changes can include:

🔕 protected focus periods
💬 agreed response-time expectations
📅 fewer fragmented meetings
🚪 visible “do not disturb” periods
📧 written rather than unscheduled verbal requests
🎯 one clear priority at a time

This is not about refusing collaboration.

It is designing collaboration so that every interaction does not destroy the work people are collaborating to produce.

🏠 Home Is Full of Interruptions Too

Interruption costs are not only a productivity issue.

At home you may be:

🍳 cooking
📧 paying a bill
🧺 sorting laundry
📅 planning something
🧠 finally thinking through a personal problem

Then:

“Dad?”

“Where are my shoes?”

“Can you help me?”

“What’s for dinner?”

Parenting and family life make uninterrupted attention impossible much of the time.

The aim therefore cannot always be prevent interruptions.

Sometimes the more realistic goal is:

make interruption recovery easier.

A notepad in the kitchen.

A visible next step.

Timers.

A quick restart note.

Leaving the document open at the exact position.

Small external supports can preserve the thread.

❤️ Interruptions in Relationships

Interruption sensitivity can easily become personal.

One person thinks:

“I only asked a question.”

The other reacts as though something much larger happened.

Understanding interruption cost can help both people interpret the moment more accurately.

Useful agreements might include:

💬 “Is now a good moment?” before non-urgent questions
⏳ allowing ten seconds to save the stopping point
🚪 respecting agreed focus periods
📱 messaging the question instead of requiring an immediate answer
🤝 identifying genuine emergencies versus things that can wait

The neurodivergent person still has responsibility for communicating respectfully.

But the other person can also recognise that timing changes the cost of the request.

🧠 Finish the Thought When Possible

Not every task can be completed before switching.

But there is often a difference between interrupting at:

half a sentence

and:

end of paragraph

or between:

halfway through a calculation

and:

after recording the result.

When possible, finish a small cognitive unit before switching.

📄 complete sentence
✅ finish current step
📝 record intermediate result
💾 save file
📌 note next action

This creates a cleaner stopping point.

It reduces the amount of unstable information that must survive the interruption.

⏳ Ask for Ten Seconds

An interruption does not always need to produce an immediate switch.

You can say:

“Yes — give me ten seconds to save where I am.”

That brief delay can allow you to:

📝 type the unfinished thought
📌 mark your location
💾 save the file
➡️ write the next action

Then you switch.

This is especially useful at work because it turns an abrupt transition into a managed transition.

Ten seconds of preparation may save substantially more reorientation later.

📱 Use Technology to Protect Context, Not Only Store Tasks

Most productivity systems focus on what needs doing.

But task re-entry often needs another kind of information:

where was I?

Useful tools can therefore store:

📍 current location
➡️ next action
❓ unresolved question
🧠 important thought
🔗 relevant files or tabs

This could be:

📝 a text note
📌 a comment inside the document
✅ a subtask
🎙️ a quick voice note
💻 a project “resume here” field

The best system is whichever makes leaving and returning cheap enough that you will actually use it.

🌱 Do Not Try to Become Uninterruptible

Life contains interruptions.

Children interrupt.

Colleagues need answers.

Phones ring.

Plans change.

Your own brain generates new ideas.

The goal is not perfect protection.

It is distinguishing between three problems:

🔕 preventable interruptions — remove them when they add little value

⏳ delayable interruptions — finish or save the current thought first

🔄 unavoidable interruptions — make returning easier

That framework is far more realistic than trying to maintain uninterrupted focus all day.

🧪 Find Your Interruption Profile

Notice which interruptions actually cost you most.

Ask:

🎯 Which tasks are hardest to return to?
🧠 What information disappears when I switch?
🔔 Do notifications or people disrupt me more?
📱 How often do I interrupt myself?
⏳ Does the interruption’s timing matter?
📍 What helps me find my place again?
🪫 Does re-entry become harder later in the day?
🎧 Does sensory load make interruption recovery worse?
🔄 Are starting, switching or remembering the main bottleneck?

You may discover that you tolerate interruptions perfectly well during routine work but not during writing.

Or social interruptions may be fine while unexpected phone calls destroy concentration.

Your pattern matters more than a universal rule.

🌱 Conclusion

Interruptions are often measured by how long they last.

That misses much of their cost.

When you stop a complex activity, you may lose working-memory contents, task context and momentum. Some attention can remain attached to unfinished work while you handle the new demand. When you return, you may need to reconstruct the mental position that existed before the interruption.

General cognitive research describes parts of this through attention residue and task-resumption costs. ADHD and autism research does not establish a unique neurodivergent attention-residue mechanism, but differences in attention regulation, working memory, switching and autistic inertia can plausibly make interruption recovery particularly costly for some people. (IDEAS/RePEc)

So when a thirty-second question costs ten minutes of functioning, the problem is not necessarily the thirty seconds.

You had to leave a mental place that took time to build.

Protect it when you can.

When you cannot, save your place.

And make the route back as obvious as possible.

📌 Key Takeaways

🔔 An interruption can cost more than the time the interruption itself takes
🧠 complex tasks contain temporary mental context that may disappear when attention moves elsewhere
🚪 task re-entry is the process of rebuilding enough context to continue
🌫️ attention residue describes attention that remains attached to a previous task after switching. (IDEAS/RePEc)
🔄 attention residue and task re-entry are related but not identical
⚠️ attention residue is a general cognitive concept, not an ADHD or autism diagnosis
⚡ ADHD can add attention, working-memory and switching difficulties to interruption recovery
♾️ autistic inertia research includes first-hand difficulty suspending and later resuming activities. (PubMed Central (PMC))
🔄 AuDHD can combine easy interruption with difficult re-entry
📱 self-interruptions can be just as important as interruptions from other people
🌪️ complex tasks and high cognitive load leave more context to reconstruct
📝 a short restart note can preserve your mental position
📌 ready-to-resume planning has experimental support for reducing attention residue. (IDEAS/RePEc)
🔕 deep work with high reconstruction costs deserves stronger interruption protection
⏳ even a few seconds to save your stopping point can improve re-entry
🌱 The goal is not zero interruptions — it is lower interruption cost and easier return

🔗 Read Next

🎯 Attention Regulation in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD
🧠 Working Memory in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD
🧠 Cognitive Load in Neurodivergent Adults
🔄 Cognitive Flexibility in Autism, ADHD & AuDHD
🚪 Task Initiation in ADHD, Autism & AuDHD
🔄 Why Cognitive Switching Is Hard in AuDHD
🛠️ Workplace Accommodations for AuDHD
🔋 Neurodivergent Capacity: Why It Changes Day to Day
🎧 Sensory Processing in Neurodivergent Adults
🛠️ Neurodivergent Accommodations

📚 Sources & Research

Leroy, S. (2009). Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks.
View the research record
The foundational attention-residue studies found that attention can remain attached to prior work after switching and that this carryover can impair subsequent task performance. (ScienceDirect)

Leroy, S., & Glomb, T. M. (2018). Tasks Interrupted: How Anticipating Time Pressure on Resumption of an Interrupted Task Causes Attention Residue and Low Performance on Interrupting Tasks and How a “Ready-to-Resume” Plan Mitigates the Effects.
View the research record
Across four studies, briefly planning where and how to resume an interrupted task reduced attention residue and protected performance on the interrupting activity. (IDEAS/RePEc)

Altmann, E. M., & Trafton, J. G. (2007). Timecourse of Recovery From Task Interruption: Data and a Model.
Experimental work on the resumption lag following interruption: the period required to reorient and resume the suspended activity. (ACT-R)

Marsh, J. E. et al. (2024). Emerging Perspectives on Distraction and Task Interruptions.
Read the review
A recent review distinguishing distraction, task interruption and related forms of attentional disruption and summarising how interruptions affect task resumption and performance. (Taylor & Francis Online)

Roberts, W. et al. — Constraints on Information Processing Capacity in Adults With ADHD.
Read the full paper
Experimental adult ADHD work showing differences under task-switching and multiple-task demands. It supports discussing executive switching difficulty but does not establish a unique ADHD attention-residue mechanism. (PubMed Central (PMC))

Buckle, K. L., Leadbitter, K., Poliakoff, E., & Gowen, E. (2021). “No Way Out Except From External Intervention”: First-Hand Accounts of Autistic Inertia.
Read the full paper
Autistic-led qualitative research that includes difficulty suspending activities for interruptions and later returning to them, alongside broader problems beginning, stopping and changing activity. (PubMed Central (PMC))