MetaCues: Enabling Critical Engagement with Generative AI for Information Seeking and Sensemaking
This addresses the issue of cognitive offloading in AI-assisted information seeking for users, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing interactive tools.
The researchers tackled the problem of passive engagement with generative AI search tools by developing MetaCues, a tool that provides metacognitive cues and a note-taking interface, which in an online study with 146 participants led to increased confidence in attitudinal judgments and broader inquiry for certain topics.
Generative AI (GenAI) search tools are increasingly used for information seeking, yet their design tends to encourage cognitive offloading, which may lead to passive engagement, selective attention, and informational homogenization. Effective use requires metacognitive engagement to craft good prompts, verify AI outputs, and critically engage with information. We developed MetaCues, a novel GenAI-based interactive tool for information seeking that delivers metacognitive cues alongside AI responses and a note-taking interface to guide users' search and associated learning. Through an online study (N = 146), we compared MetaCues to a baseline tool without cues, across two broad search topics that required participants to explore diverse perspectives in order to make informed judgments. Preliminary findings regarding participants' search behavior show that MetaCues leads to increased confidence in attitudinal judgments about the search topic as well as broader inquiry, with the latter effect emerging primarily for the topic that was less controversial and with which participants had relatively less familiarity. Accordingly, we outline directions for future qualitative exploration of search interactions and inquiry patterns.