The Recruitment and Termination Threshold (RTT) Framework: A Threshold-Based Model of Neurodivergent Cognitive Variation

The Recruitment and Termination Threshold (RTT) Framework proposes that variation in two control parameters governs transitions into and out of deliberative processing: a Recruitment Threshold (RT), determining when intuitive processing gives way to deliberate auditing, and a Termination Threshold (TT), determining when an active audit is released. Existing accounts of cognitive control treat engagement and disengagement as a single threshold problem; the RTT Framework separates them, generating a parameter space in which qualitatively distinct cognitive profiles emerge as structural consequences rather than independent clinical entities. Drawing on the Opportunity Cost Model of cognition, the framework proposes that extreme threshold configurations produce sustained cognitive costs when mismatched with environmental demands, and that this mismatch — rather than any intrinsic deficit — constitutes the core mechanism of neurodivergent disorder.

The parameter space is symmetric by construction. The low-RT pole maps onto the Autistic profile; the logical counterpart — a high-RT profile characterized by reduced spontaneous recruitment — is designated the Intuitistic, with a candidate population identifiable in the emerging literature on Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome. TT variation independently derives the subtype structure of ADHD, distinguishing hyperactive and inattentive presentations as low-TT and high-TT configurations, respectively. Because RT and TT are partially independent parameters, the framework derives comorbidity between conditions as a structural expectation rather than a classificatory problem, and accounts for empirical patterns that existing models treat as unrelated or unexplained, including the gender distribution of neurodivergent conditions and the identification problem surrounding CDS. The framework was derived from first principles rather than constructed to fit existing data; its alignment with these patterns represents an independent convergence rather than a post-hoc account.

The RTT Framework integrates with dual-process and predictive processing accounts and generates falsifiable predictions, among them that recruitment frequency and deliberation persistence will prove statistically independent of each other and of general cognitive capacity — a finding that would validate RT and TT as distinct structural axes rather than proxies for processing ability. Disorder, within this model, is reframed as the predictable outcome of a constitutional threshold configuration meeting an environment it was not shaped to navigate.