Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task
This study examines the cognitive cost of using ChatGPT for essay writing by tracking 54 participants across essay-writing sessions using three conditions: LLM assistance, search engine use, and no external tools. EEG analysis revealed that brain connectivity systematically weakened with increased external support, with the LLM group showing the poorest neural engagement, lowest essay ownership, and diminished ability to recall their own writing compared to brain-only and search engine groups. Over four months, LLM users demonstrated measurable cognitive deficits across neural, linguistic, and performance metrics, suggesting that AI assistance may create "cognitive debt" by reducing active cognitive engagement during learning.
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