Vector Institute's Cognitive Atrophy Bench: LLMs Become More Directive in Long Chats
VectorInst · x · 2026-08-07
Researchers at Vector Institute introduced Cognitive Atrophy Bench, evaluating whether LLMs gradually erode human agency in multi-turn counselling conversations.
Built on 1,576 real counselling conversations and 15,680 dialogue turns, the benchmark collected 42,230 responses from 5 frontier LLMs, reviewed by clinical psychology experts. It found that as conversations lengthen, models exhibit directive advice, unsolicited problem-solving, and heavy recommendation reliance, shifting towards leading the conversation rather than supporting the user.
Highlighting trajectory-level behavioral shifts missed by conventional single-turn safety evals, the study raises concerns about the long-term impact of AI mental health tools on emotional regulation and decision-making.
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