#research
Senwitt pages tagged research — blog posts, answers, glossary terms, research, and more.
- blog
What the MIT cognitive debt study actually shows (and what reporters keep getting wrong)
A careful read of the 2025 MIT Media Lab cognitive debt study — what it tested, what it found, what coverage often overstates, and what it means for daily practice.
- glossary
AI overreliance
AI overreliance is the academic term for using AI past the point of useful assistance — where it substitutes for the cognitive work rather than supporting it.
- glossary
Attention control
Attention control is the cognitive ability to direct, sustain, and shift attention deliberately — the foundation of focus and a central concept in the Focus Skill territory.
- glossary
Cognitive debt
Cognitive debt is the gap between what AI helps you produce and what you actually encode while producing it — coined by the 2025 MIT Media Lab study on LLM-assisted essay writing.
- glossary
Cognitive offloading
Cognitive offloading is the use of external tools — notebooks, calculators, search engines, AI assistants — to reduce internal mental effort on a task.
- glossary
Digital amnesia
Digital amnesia is the popular-press term for the Google effect — forgetting information you know you can retrieve later via search or AI.
- glossary
The Google effect (digital amnesia)
The Google effect is the tendency to remember WHERE information can be found instead of WHAT the information is. First named in a 2011 Science paper by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner.
- glossary
Transactive memory
Transactive memory is a 1985 cognitive-science concept describing how groups distribute remembering across multiple people, so that no individual needs to remember everything alone.
- glossary
Working memory
Working memory is the short-term cognitive workspace that holds and manipulates information for ongoing thinking — usually 4-7 items at a time, for seconds to minutes.
- answers
Do brain training apps actually work?
Sort of. They reliably make you better at the games inside the app. The broader cognitive-improvement claims the category was built on are weakly supported, and were sanctioned by the FTC. Here is the honest answer.
- answers
Is GPS making us bad at navigation?
Yes, for the people who use it heavily — UCL and UCSB research has documented measurable spatial-memory effects. Here is what the studies actually show, and what to do about it.
- data
AI use and cognitive skill self-reports (2025-2026)
Published survey data on what knowledge workers say about AI's effect on their cognitive skills — drawn from Pew, BCG, Microsoft+Carnegie Mellon, and HBR coverage. Self-report, not measured cognition.
- data
Average reaction time by age (adults)
Published cohort ranges for simple visual reaction time across adult age groups, with every number footnoted to a primary source. No fabricated stats.
- data
The brain training app market in 2026 — size, growth, players
What the published market data on brain training apps actually says in 2026 — market size in GBP and USD, growth projections, market share by player, with sources.
- data
Working memory span by age (digit span norms)
Published cohort norms for digit-span working memory by adult age group, drawn from the clinical neuropsych literature. Ranges, not point estimates. No fabrication.
- route
Research hub.
Senwitt research.
- route
AI cognitive debt — what the MIT study says.
The MIT cognitive debt study explained.
- route
Cognitive offloading and AI.
Cognitive offloading explainer.
- route
Brain training claims.
Why Senwitt avoids them.
- route
Use it or lose it.
The practice principle in the AI era.
- route
AI overreliance and thinking skills.
AI overreliance explainer.
- route
Brain exercise vs brain training.
Category distinction.
- route
Google effect & digital amnesia.
Full research-page treatment.
- route
Transactive memory and AI.
Wegner 1985 framing extended to AI.
- route
AI brain fry — research treatment.
BCG/HBR/Pew data on AI cognitive fatigue.
- route
GPS and spatial memory.
UCL + UCSB studies.
- route
Programmer cognitive skills and AI.
Anthropic 2026 study + developer skill atrophy.
- route
BrainHQ alternative.
Senwitt vs BrainHQ.
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Scope of evidence.
What Senwitt claims and does not claim.
- route
Your Brain on ChatGPT.
Kosmyna 2025 deep dive + Stanković 2026 critique.
- route
Mental sharpness with age.
The cognitive-aging literature in plain language.