ChatGPT produces more "lazy" thinkers: Evidence of cognitive engagement decline

2025-06-30

AI Summary

This study investigates the impact of generative AI—exemplified by ChatGPT—on students’ cognitive engagement in academic writing, specifically examining whether its use induces cognitive offloading and undermines deep learning. Method: A randomized controlled experiment was conducted, employing the newly developed, validated Cognitive Engagement Scale for AI (CES-AI) to quantitatively assess psychological effort, attentional investment, and deep thinking during argumentative writing tasks. Results: Students using ChatGPT scored significantly lower than controls across all CES-AI dimensions (p < 0.01), indicating AI-assisted writing may foster cognitive passivity and impair self-regulated learning. The study’s key contribution is the first development and empirical validation of CES-AI—a domain-specific instrument for measuring cognitive engagement in AI-augmented educational contexts—and provides rigorous evidence of potential cognitive risks associated with generative AI in higher education writing tasks, thereby informing theoretically grounded, evidence-based design and pedagogical interventions for AI-enhanced learning.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Computational Creativity
• Humans and AI: Game Design — Procedural Content Generation & Storytelling
• Natural Language Processing: Generation

Application Category

• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI
• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content

Abstract

Despite the increasing use of large language models (LLMs) in education, concerns have emerged about their potential to reduce deep thinking and active learning. This study investigates the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools, specifically ChatGPT, on the cognitive engagement of students during academic writing tasks. The study employed an experimental design with participants randomly assigned to either an AI-assisted (ChatGPT) or a non-assisted (control) condition. Participants completed a structured argumentative writing task followed by a cognitive engagement scale (CES), the CES-AI, developed to assess mental effort, attention, deep processing, and strategic thinking. The results revealed significantly lower cognitive engagement scores in the ChatGPT group compared to the control group. These findings suggest that AI assistance may lead to cognitive offloading. The study contributes to the growing body of literature on the psychological implications of AI in education and raises important questions about the integration of such tools into academic practice. It calls for pedagogical strategies that promote active, reflective engagement with AI-generated content to avoid compromising self-regulated learning and deep cognitive involvement of students.

Problem

• Impact of ChatGPT on student cognitive engagement
• AI assistance reduces deep thinking in writing tasks
• Need strategies to maintain active learning with AI

Innovation

• Experimental design comparing AI-assisted and control groups
• Cognitive engagement scale (CES-AI) to assess mental effort
• Pedagogical strategies for active engagement with AI content