CITATION — REFERENCE ENTRY
Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task — arXiv
- Key
- kosmyna-2025-your-brain-on-chatgpt
- Authors
- Kosmyna, Nataliya; Hauptmann, Eugene; Yuan, Ye Tong; Situ, Jessica; Liao, Xian-Hao; Beresnitzky, Ashly Vivian; Braunstein, Iris; Maes, Pattie
- Issued
- 2025-6-10
- Type
- article
- Publisher
- arXiv
Raw CSL JSON
{
"DOI": "10.48550/arXiv.2506.08872",
"URL": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872",
"type": "article",
"genre": "Preprint",
"title": "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task",
"author": [
{
"given": "Nataliya",
"family": "Kosmyna"
},
{
"given": "Eugene",
"family": "Hauptmann"
},
{
"given": "Ye Tong",
"family": "Yuan"
},
{
"given": "Jessica",
"family": "Situ"
},
{
"given": "Xian-Hao",
"family": "Liao"
},
{
"given": "Ashly Vivian",
"family": "Beresnitzky"
},
{
"given": "Iris",
"family": "Braunstein"
},
{
"given": "Pattie",
"family": "Maes"
}
],
"issued": {
"date-parts": [
[
2025,
6,
10
]
]
},
"number": "arXiv:2506.08872",
"publisher": "arXiv"
}
Claims
-
In an EEG study of 54 Boston-area participants aged 18 to 39 writing essays, brain connectivity was weakest in the group using an LLM, intermediate with a search engine, and strongest with no tools.
"Brain connectivity systematically scaled down with the amount of external support: the Brain‑only group exhibited the strongest, widest‑ranging networks, Search Engine group showed intermediate engagement, and LLM assistance elicited the weakest overall coupling."
-
After the first session, 15 of 18 participants in the LLM group failed to correctly quote from the essay they had just written, compared with 2 of 18 in each of the other groups.
"In the LLM‑assisted group, 83.3 % of participants (15/18) failed to provide a correct quotation, whereas only 11.1 % (2/18) in both the Search‑Engine and Brain‑Only groups encountered the same difficulty."
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