Traditional lab-based assessments in psychology, such as interpreting aptitude and personality profiles, are more prone to "cognitive offloading" in the GenAI era. This case study investigates the difference between the student’s interpretive capabilities in a controlled/proctored environment (classroom) and their outputs in an unproctored environment. This research employs a qualitative content analysis of undergraduate lab records. Proctored classroom interpretation of a personality assessment, specifically 16PF, was compared with unproctored reports, in which Gen AI was freely accessible. Although the unproctored reports were found to possess superior grammatical sophistication, clinical jargon, and professional formatting, they were devoid of the unique integrative synthesis and behavioral contextualization observed in the simpler writing samples. The results indicate that the students are using the AI to describe isolated test scores while ignoring the complex relationships between personality, behavioural patterns and context. The study finds “linguistic fingerprints” – for instance, overly formal writing and a lack of clinical detail – that help researchers determine whether students are using AI to write their report, indicating that students are skipping the cognitive work of developing the kind of intuition necessary for psychological practice. This “interpretive struggle" is circumvented by using AI, and as a result, students do not learn to develop the skills necessary for detecting diagnostic errors and hallucinations created by AI. The study advocate for a revised curriculum in psychometrics that focuses on human oversight in order for future practitioners to retain complex thinking skills beyond artificial intelligence capabilities.

Authors:
Riya Rafeekh, RV University, India

About the Presenter(s)
Riya Rafeekh is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at RV University, Bengaluru, India. Her research explores how bilinguals process language in interactional contexts, and her broader research interest also includes cognition and mental health.

Connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/riya-rafeekh-2b55b5227/

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Riya-Rafeekh

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