How AI affects Critical Thinking and Cognitive Skills of Students
How AI affects Critical Thinking and Cognitive Skills of Students
By: Founder of BCSF
“Just use AI”,“ I used Chatgpt and I got an A on my English paper”, and“ Gemini did all my work for me”, are the comments that fill the halls in middle and high schools today. While these actions that seem great and unharmful to students, they hide a dark truth. When students rely on AI to do tasks for them that require using their own cognitive abilities including critical thinking, they diminish the abilities to perform these skills without the assistance of AI. The growing reliance on AI for academic tasks continues to grow, students become accustomed to AI generated solution, they lose their ability to think critically and have issues with their brain development from cognitive offloading, as a result of this, many threats propose towards the future of cognitive skills including analysis, decision making and evaluation as they diminish with every prompt AI is given by students. As more people have became accustomed to relying on AI to preform task that require cognitive skills, it has lead to many negative effects. In an article, Zhang notes that it has been "found that excessive dependence causes a decline in independent thinking skills”(Thiangtham).This decline of the independent thinking skills, particularly in evaluation and analysis, demonstrates how the reliance of AI tools to perform tasks for students strips them of these crucial skills. This will lead for students to eventually, to struggle to perform these human capabilities without the assistance of AI tools in there everyday life.Additionally, the negative effects caused by the reliance of AI can cause academic misconduct/dishonesty. Iskender and De angelis mentions that becoming overly reliant on these AI tools can lead to “diminished critical thinking/ increased instances of plagiarism” (Zhai).The skill of decision making is slowly being lost as people are trusting and relying on AI generated solutions without considering their own and others thoughts. This dwindled effect on critical thinking doesn’t only affect the skill independent decision making but also in how a person identity themselves and proper fact- checking of these solution provided by AI, can lead to situations of plagiarism without the person knowing, due to no proper overview on the provided solution.Lastly, the reliance of AI tools is also shown to lead to the effect of cognitive offloading. In a study conducted by Gerlich, he mentions the reliance of external tools including AI “lead to a decline in internal cognitive abilities, such as memory retention and critical analysis skills"(Gerlich). Cognitive offloading may seem great for tasks that require cognitive skills but an over reliance on these tools that give short term efficiency leads to the long term effect on the development and maintenance of critical cognitive skills including memory retention and critical analysis. These skills are used in various scenarios not just in education but in a persons everyday life, the risks involved with using these tools long term for the short term efficiency of reduced mental strain on the brain does more harm than good.
Work cited:
Gerlich, Michael. "AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking." Societies, vol. 15, no. 1, Jan. 2025, p. NA(NA). Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006. Accessed 13 May 2026.
Reoli, Rachel, et al. "Student Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence in Doctor of Physical Therapy Education." Physiotherapy Theory & Practice, vol. 41, no. 10, 1 Oct. 2025, pp. 2112–17. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1080/09593985.2025.2496978.Accessed 13 May 2026.
Rosas-Jimenez, Carlos Alberto, et al. “Trust and Overreliance on ChatGPT and Its Implications on Critical Thinking”: An Exploration in Health Policy. Biomed Central Ltd., 15 Feb. 2026. Gale, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A875070030/GPS?u=chan44144e&sid=bookmark-GPS&xid=74941208. Accessed 12 May 2026.
Thiangtham, Koravick, et al. "The Impact of AI Literacy on Undergraduate Autonomous Learning: EJEL." Electronic Journal of E-Learning, vol. 24, no. 2, 2026, pp. 32-46. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/trade-journals/impact-ai-literacy-on-undergraduate-autonomous/docview/3313703439/se-2, doi:https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.24.2.4188.Accessed 13 May 2026.
Zhai, Chunpeng, et al. "The Effects of Over-Reliance on AI Dialogue Systems on Students' Cognitive Abilities: A Systematic Review." Smart Learning Environments, vol. 11, no. 1, Dec. 2024. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A798244219/AONE?u=chan44144e&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=cf5ef757. Accessed 12 May 2026.