Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42646028›Full record

ArticleJournal of Intelligence2026

Is It Mine or Not Mine? Cognitive Offloading to Generative AI and Concern over the Erosion of Cognitive Ownership.

Jing Su, Zhuo Wang, Zhen Qiang, Zhonghou Wang

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of Intelligence, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Jing SuSchool of Educational Sciences, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.
Zhuo WangSchool of Educational Sciences, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.ORCID 0000-0001-9537-3376
Zhen QiangCollege English Department, School of Foreign Languages, Lanzhou Jiaotong University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
Zhonghou WangSchool of Educational Sciences, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China.

Funding

Qingdao Municipal "Double Hundred" Research Program 2026-B-075
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Cognitive offloading-delegating cognitive work to external tools-is basic to human cognition, but generative AI (GenAI) amplifies it radically: entire cognitive products can now be produced on request. This sharpens a question about agency over one's own thinking: when cognition is habitually offloaded, does its product still feel like one's own? We surveyed 239 pre-service teachers, operationalizing the felt loss of cognitive ownership as concern over the erosion of teaching-design subjectivity (TSC)-the metacognitive appraisal that AI-assisted work is not genuinely one's own and that independent capacity is declining. Guided by the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution (I-PACE) model, we tested whether AI anxiety/fear of missing out (affective) and impulsivity (self-regulatory) relate to this concern through behavioral GenAI dependency-habitual offloading. In a structural equation model with bias-corrected bootstrapping, dependency strongly predicted TSC and partially mediated the effect of AI anxiety; impulsivity raised dependency but showed a suppression pattern (a positive indirect effect offset by a null total effect), and the model explained 35% of the variance in the concern. Habitual offloading-that is, GenAI dependency-rather than generic AI use, accompanies the metacognitive loss of cognitive ownership.

Indexed as

agencycognitive offloadingcognitive ownershipGenAI dependencygenerative AImetacognition

Identifiers

PMID42646028
PMCPMC13514115

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.