{"id":249834,"date":"2026-05-19T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T18:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T22:10:14","slug":"is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/19\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it time to measure cognitive stunting?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/\">Is it time to measure cognitive stunting?<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/\">https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-19 17:11:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.brookings.edu\">www.brookings.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the past two years, I have been deeply engaged\u2014through leading the Brookings Global Task Force on AI and Education\u2014in examining generative artificial intelligence and what it means for students\u2019 learning and development. Throughout this process\u2014conducting interviews, reviewing studies, and debating with colleagues\u2014one issue has consistently troubled me: how to accurately describe the risk AI poses to children\u2019s thinking skills.<\/p>\n<p>Generative AI is a learning tool like none we have ever seen. It can generate ideas, write, design, compose music and poetry, and train itself to improve. Precisely because of this power, many have sounded the alarm about its potential to encourage cognitive offloading among young people. Our task force raised this concern as well. In our report, we described the risk as follows:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe risk stems from what study participants view as a straightforward progression: AI tools are more likely to foster dependence. As students increasingly use these tools, and \u2018offload\u2019 an increasing amount of their cognitive tasks to these tools, a positive feedback loop emerges where they see positive results in terms of grades and in time and effort saved. These outcomes then create increased dependence on AI tools, increased \u2018cognitive offloading,\u2019 and increased \u2018cognitive decline\u2019\u201d (p. 56).<\/p>\n<p>At the time, my coauthors and I debated how best to describe this phenomenon. In truth, we have never before encountered a moment in which, across so many domains, the task of thinking itself can be so easily outsourced. We ultimately used the terms\u00a0cognitive offloading\u00a0and\u00a0cognitive decline\u00a0because that is how participants described their experiences. But neither term fully captures the risk we are facing.<\/p>\n<p>Human beings have always cognitively offloaded as we invent new tools. This is how I can walk into a grocery store rather than forage for food\u2014something my distant ancestors surely could do better than I can. And, having&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is it time to measure cognitive stunting? https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/is-it-time-to-measure-cognitive-stunting\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-19 17:11:00 Source Domain: www.brookings.edu&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":249835,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/shutterstock_2771577613.jpg?quality=75","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-249834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-generative-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":249836,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249834\/revisions\/249836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}