“Use of generative artificial intelligence damages people's critical-thinking ability.”

Some studies have reported that GenAI may significantly improve students’ learning engagement, self-regulation, motivation, and autonomous learning (Han et al., 2025), while others argue that over-reliance on GenAI technologies may negatively impact students’ critical cognitive capabilities, e.g., decision-making, critical thinking, and analytical reasoning (Zhai et al., 2024).

While AI aids vocational education, it has the potential to reduce cognitive engagement because the students may accept passively the information provided by AI without critical scrutiny (Ododo et al., 2024). … If students overuse AI-provided answers, their skill to develop independent critical thinking skills may be impaired. … If students over-rely on AI-based answers, they might bypass necessary mental operations like critical thinking and self-reasoning (Correia et al., 2024).

The results indicate that GenAI-supported learning was, on average, associated with higher CT performance (g = 0.544, 95% CI [0.314, 0.775], 95% PI [-0.588, 1.677]), with significant heterogeneity observed across studies (Q = 280.994, p < 0.001).

The findings revealed a significant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading. … The correlation between AI tool use and critical thinking was found to be strongly negative (r = −0.68), suggesting that greater reliance on AI tools is associated with a decline in critical thinking skills.

The study found that AI dialogue systems may pose challenges, including concerns about over-reliance, which could potentially impede the development of critical thinking and writing skills among students and researchers.

The effect of the use of GenAI tools on critical thinking, as a direct object of inquiry, has not yet been explored. … Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.

Research on ChatGPT's educational impact reveals contradictory findings. … Some studies report improvements in reasoning, argumentation, and idea generation ( Daniel et al., 2025; Dimeli & Kostas, 2025; Farazouli et al., 2023), while others highlight concerns including diminished creativity, superficial analytical depth, and cognitive offloading from excessive AI reliance ( Bai et al., 2023; Roy & Putatunda, 2023; Vargas-Murillo et al., 2023).

The findings identified generative AI tools and LLMs possessed both the potential to nurture and the risk of hindering CT in EFL education. 66.67% of studies reported generative AI tools and LLMs’ positive role in CT, while 33.33% of studies reported its negative role in CT.

Results demonstrated a positive impact on students' critical thinking disposition, evidenced by significantly higher posttest scores in the experimental group compared to the control group, particularly in truth-seeking and open-mindedness dimensions.

While GenAI tools offer significant potential to support CT, their integration into higher education also introduces important pedagogical and cognitive risks. Cognitive offloading may occur when students rely on GenAI to bypass complex reasoning tasks [11,18]. This can hinder CT development and reinforce dependency on external cognitive agents [33]. Additionally, the illusion of understanding arises when confident AI responses are misinterpreted as correct despite containing errors [10]. Uncritical acceptance of AI outputs may inhibit self-regulation and weaken higher-order reasoning [17,18,34].

These findings support a Dual-Mechanism Model: GenAI functions as a cognitive amplifier under structured pedagogical conditions and as a cognitive substitute under unguided use. … Conversely, Gammoh (2024) identified diminished critical thinking as a primary risk of unguided ChatGPT use, while Chea and Deng (2026) documented a paradox whereby GenAI simultaneously enhanced creativity yet eroded critical thinking through passive consumption of AI-generated content.

The analysis revealed that Gen-AI exerts a moderate positive effect on HOT, with the most significant improvement observed in problem-solving abilities, followed by critical thinking, while its effect on creativity is relatively limited.

Gerlich [6] argues that this shift undermines the development and application of critical thinking, particularly in settings where users become passive recipients of AI-generated content. … In a large-scale study involving student and workplace populations, Gerlich found a consistent negative relationship between GenAI use and critical argument quality, especially when no structural prompting or reflective engagement was required. … The findings of this study contribute to an increasingly urgent discussion in the social sciences: how generative AI affects cognitive effort, reflective reasoning, and learning outcomes. While previous literature has raised concerns about AI-induced passivity, this study provides one of the first controlled experimental demonstrations that such effects are not inevitable. Instead, the observed cognitive outcomes depended strongly on how AI was used.

does GenAI enhance learning or does it improve immediate performance while reducing the cognitive activity on which durable learning depends? … We adopt the emerging construct of cognitive debt: a potential cumulative reduction in metacognitive calibration and unaided higher-order performance that persists beyond an AI-assisted epi sode. … The framework generates falsifiable hypotheses, centrally that unrestricted AI use on deep-processing tasks may yield a product–process dissociation: higher-rated assignments but lower unaided delayed transfer.

The findings indicate that generative AI use is associated with superficial engagement with academic content, diminished self-regulation of cognitive effort, increasing reliance on AI-supported thinking, and heightened awareness of related cognitive risks and internal conflict.

The present meta-analysis reveals that Gen-AI exerts a moderate positive influence on the development of students’ HOT, with a moderately significant positive impact on problem-solving ability and critical thinking, yet a relatively more minor effect on creativity.

Yet research on cognitive offloading has largely treated AI use as a unidimensional phenomenon, obscuring a theoretically consequential distinction: whether AI substitutes for the user's own thinking or scaffolds it. … Dependent offloading was positively associated with cognitive agency transfer and negatively associated with intrinsic motivation, which in turn were linked to poorer perceived outcomes. Autonomous offloading was positively associated with intrinsic motivation and more favorable perceived outcomes. … These findings highlight the manner of AI engagement—not merely its frequency—as a key factor in understanding its associations with perceived cognitive functioning, and point to practical strategies for educators, learners, and AI tool designers seeking to harness AI without undermining cognitive autonomy.

The findings indicate that generative AI use is associated with superficial engagement with academic content, diminished self-regulation of cognitive effort, increasing reliance on AI-supported thinking, and heightened awareness of related cognitive risks and internal conflict.

Evidence suggests that the use of AI tools can lead to higher cognitive learning behaviour since it leads learners to engage in higher-order thinking skills, such as evaluation and synthesis, promoting more than mere recall (Gonsalves, Citation2024). … Researchers report that GenAI tools can enhance critical thinking skills, specifically in structured argumentation, by offering real-time feedback and prompting students to articulate claims, supports, and counterarguments more thoroughly (Noroozi, Alqassab, et al., Citation2025). … Gerlich (Citation2025) highlights the phenomenon of cognitive offloading, where frequent AI use may lead to a decrease in users’ engagement in deep reasoning tasks.

In theory, DI-GAI-CT provides the first mechanism-rich model for explaining both uplift and erosion in higher-order reasoning driven by GenAI.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first review to incorporate a diverse evidence set into a multilevel, dual-stream process model, indicating precisely when, how and why GenAI may either strengthen or undermine critical thinking abilities.

At the same time, the same literature has raised substantial concerns regarding misinformation, hallucinated content, overreliance, reduced independent thinking, and academic integrity risks (Cotton et al., 2024). … As shown in Supplementary Table 1, IO in prior GAI research have commonly been measured through indicators such as academic achievement, knowledge acquisition, writing performance, feedback quality, problem-solving, and critical thinking, often using test scores, rubric-based assessments, and task performance measures, whereas SO have typically been assessed through constructs such as motivation, engagement, attitudes, self-efficacy, enjoyment, anxiety, and willingness to communicate, usually through self-report questionnaires or validated affective scales. … As shown in Supplementary Table 4, after a combined analysis of 21 studies, it was found that the overall effect showed a statistically significant positive effect. Hedges’ g was 1.096, and the 95% confidence interval was 0.087 to 2.104. The overall effect is statistically significant (z = 2.13, p = 0.0332). These results show that GAI is related to the significant positive improvement of IOs of higher education students.

Results indicated that greater AI dependence was associated with lower levels of critical thinking, with cognitive fatigue partially mediating this relationship.

In a cognitive crutch pathway, answer-first, product-oriented use is associated with cognitive offloading and overreliance, reduced epistemic effort, and weaker verification practices, with downstream risks for argument quality, source evaluation, and transfer beyond tool use. … In a cognitive coach pathway, process-first designs incorporating Socratic questioning, counterargument routines, verification prompts, and reflective checkpoints are more consistently aligned with strengthened epistemic vigilance, improved calibration, and higher-quality justification and error detection.

Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. Qualitatively, GenAI shifts the nature of critical thinking toward information verification, response integration, and task stewardship.

We found a temporal reversal: LLM access from the start (early, continuous) improved performance under time pressure but impaired it with sufficient time, whereas beginning the task independently (late, no LLM) showed the opposite pattern. … These findings demonstrate that time constraints fundamentally shape whether an LLM augments or undermines critical thinking, making time a central consideration when designing LLM support and evaluating human-AI collaboration in cognitive tasks.

We found a temporal reversal: LLM access from the start (early, continuous) improved performance under time pressure but impaired it with sufficient time, whereas beginning the task independently (late, no LLM) showed the opposite pattern. … These findings demonstrate that time constraints fundamentally shape whether an LLM augments or undermines critical thinking, making time a central consideration when designing LLM support and evaluating human-AI collaboration in cognitive tasks.

Education researchers Liu et al. [12] reviewed 15 papers on using LLMs to learn languages and it's impact on critical thinking. More specifically, they were working to understand if LLMs were hindering or helping people's ability to critically think in learning English as a Foreign Language. They found "66.67% of studies reported generative AI tools and LLMs' positive role in CT, while 33.33% of studies reported its negative role in CT. "

Students who trusted and routinely used genAI reported significantly lower cognitive engagement. … Our findings suggest a potential cognitive debt cycle where routine genAI use weakens students’ intellectual habits, potentially driving and escalating over-reliance.

Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking. … Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.

The results challenge current research that GenAI use by undergraduate students may be detrimental for the development of critical thinking, and highlight the need for further research into student-AI interaction. … The results of this study contrast with some current research which hypothesises a negative effect of AI-interaction on development of critical thinking in undergraduate students (Tian and Zhang, 2025).

Another limitation of using AI tools like ChatGPTfor critical thinking tasks is that it could prevent students from developingtheir independent thinking abilities [4, 16]. … The overreliance on AI tools can weaken students’ critical thinking, making it harder for students to learn important lessons from their mistakes and overcome tough challenges [4, 20].

The findings show that GenAI does not produce a single, uniform effect on learners’ reasoning. The same technology can strengthen or weaken critical thinking depending on how students interact with it. … GenAI strengthens critical thinking when design requires learners to evaluate, question, and revise AI-generated content; GenAI weakens critical thinking when design allows students to accept outputs without evaluation and bypasses the inquiry, analysis, and metacognitive monitoring through which reasoning develops.

The adoption of generative AI (GenAI) tools in higher education has prompted questions about their impact on students’ critical thinking. … Pre-and-post testing revealed significant improvements in lower-order skills - remembering, understanding and applying but no statistically significant improvement in higher order skills - analysing, evaluating, and creating. … We conclude that GenAI can scaffold lower-level learning when embedded into structured activities, whereas gains in higher-order thinking depend on deliberate instructional design.

Findings indicate that greater AI use was associated with stronger cognitive offloading, which was further associated with greater epistemic trust transfer toward AI and lower learning accountability.