Effects of AI Assistance on Cognitive Tasks

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated into everyday activities, yet its impact on cognitive performance remains poorly understood. This study investigated the effects of AI-assisted learning on reading comprehension, immediate and delayed recall, recognition memory, and metacognitive calibration. Forty adults from Buenos Aires (Argentina) were randomly assigned to an AI or control group. Participants read a text and produced a summary either with or without AI assistance, according to their assigned condition, before delivering an oral presentation. Immediate recall and reading comprehension were then assessed. After a 20-minute interval, participants completed a delayed recall task, a recognition memory task, and confidence ratings for each response. Familiarity with AI and cognitive ability were also assessed. Participants in the AI group endorsed significantly more lure items than those in the control group, whereas no significant differences were observed in the remaining cognitive measures. These findings suggest that AI-assisted learning may increase susceptibility to accepting plausible but inaccurate information, suggesting that AI-assisted learning may increase susceptibility to false recognition without a corresponding change in confidence, potentially indicating a mismatch between accuracy and metacognitive awareness.