A new analysis by Timothy Cook, M.Ed., argues that artificial intelligence poses fundamentally different cognitive risks for adults versus children, with adults experiencing reversible skill atrophy while children may face permanent “cognitive foreclosure.” The research, published March 22 in Psychology Today, distinguishes between losing existing capabilities and never developing them in the first place.
Cook’s analysis centers on what he calls the “AI audit problem”—the inability of children to evaluate AI output because they lack the domain knowledge they’re supposed to be developing. “You cannot check an AI’s analysis of heredity if you don’t yet understand what heredity is,” Cook writes. “You cannot evaluate an AI’s interpretation of the French Revolution if you’ve never read conflicting accounts of it yourself.”
The distinction emerged from Cook’s reexamination of Michael Gerlich’s study on AI offloading and critical thinking. Participants over 46 showed higher critical thinking scores alongside lower AI reliance, while those between 17-25 showed the inverse pattern. Cook attributes this to biological development rather than generational preference: “The older group probably offloaded tasks they already knew how to perform. The younger group offloaded task they never learned how to perform.”
Supporting evidence comes from a 2026 preprint by Shen and Tamkin involving software developers learning new coding libraries. Developers who fully delegated coding tasks to AI produced working code but failed conceptual understanding tests afterward. “They couldn’t debug what the AI had written,” Cook notes, demonstrating how delegation can undermine skill acquisition even in professional contexts.
Cook argues that adult AI interaction typically involves “delegation of automatable tasks,” allowing retention of judgment capabilities, while children’s interactions more often constitute “substitution, where the AI makes the micro-judgments the child is supposed to be building.” This creates what he terms “foreclosure”—the permanent closure of developmental pathways that may not be reversible like simple skill atrophy. The research suggests educators and parents need to distinguish between AI use that supplements existing knowledge versus AI use that replaces skill development entirely.
